Phenomenology for Consciousness

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Consciousness

Contents

Articles

Isms

1

Behaviorism 1Cartesian Dualism 7Connectivism 20Direct realism 22Dualism 29Emergentism 41Enactivism 46Endurantism 48Epiphenomenalism 48Externalism 52Idealism 56Logical positivism 68Monism 75Mysticism 82Open individualism 88Perdurantism 89Phenomenalism 90Physicalism 93Property dualism 101Reductionism 103Reflexive monism 110Type physicalism 111

Subjects

115

Abstract object 115Artificial intelligence 117Associationism 144Attention 145Awareness 150Behavioral neuroscience 152Cognitive neuroscience 158Cognitive science 166

Consciousness 177Dependent origination 193Distributed cognition 202Embodied cognition 205Embodied cognitive science 218Embodied Embedded Cognition 223Epistemology 225Functionalism 237Hard problem of consciousness 246Heideggerian terminology 249Heterophenomenology 257Identity and change 258Intentionality 263Introspect 268Level of consciousness 271Metaphysical naturalism 275Mind-body dichotomy 287Mind/brain identity 288Mindstream 290Mnemonic 310Multiple realizability 313Neural correlates of consciousness 317Neural Darwinism 324Nonreductive physicalism 327Noumena 344Ontological pluralism 350Percept 352Personal identity 363Personal life 370Phenomenology 373Philosophical zombie 384Philosophy of mind 389Presentism 406Qualia 407Quantum mind 424Self 435Self-awareness 438Self-Schema 443

1

Isms

Behaviorism

(or

behaviourism

), also called the

learning perspective

(where any physical action is a behavior), is aphilosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do

—

including acting, thinking, andfeeling

—

can andshould be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by alteringbehavior patterns or modifying the environment.

[1]

[2]

The behaviorist school of thought maintains that behaviors assuch can be described scientifically without recourse either to internal physiological events or to hypotheticalconstructs such as the mind.

[3]

Behaviorism comprises the position that all theories should have observationalcorrelates but that there are no philosophical differences between publicly observable processes (such as actions) andprivately observable processes (such as thinking and feeling).

[4]

From early psychology in the 19th century, the behaviorist school of thought ran concurrently and sharedcommonalities with the psychoanalytic and Gestalt movements in psychology into the 20th century; but also differedfrom the mental philosophy of the Gestalt psychologists in critical ways.

[5]

Its main influences were Ivan Pavlov,who investigated classical conditioning although he did not necessarily agree with behaviorism or behaviorists,Edward Lee Thorndike, John B. Watson who rejected introspective methods and sought to restrict psychology toexperimental methods, and B.F. Skinner who conducted research on operant conditioning.

[4]

In the second half of the 20th century, behaviorism was largely eclipsed as a result of the cognitive revolution.

[6]

[7]

While behaviorism and cognitive schools of psychological thought may not agree theoretically, they havecomplemented each other in practical therapeutic applications, such as in cognitive

–

behavioral therapy that hasdemonstrable utility in treating certain pathologies, such as simple phobias, PTSD, and addiction. In addition,behaviorism sought to create a comprehensive model of the stream of behavior from the birth of the human to hisdeath (see Behavior analysis of child development).

Versions

There is no generally agreed-upon classification, but some titles given to the various branches of behaviorisminclude:•Methodological: The behaviorism of Watson; the objective study of behavior; no mental life, no internal states;thought is covert speech.•Radical: Skinner's behaviorism; is considered radical since it expands behavioral principles to processes withinthe organism; in contrast to methodological behaviorism; not mechanistic or reductionistic; hypothetical(mentalistic) internal states are not considered causes of behavior, phenomena must be observable at least to theindividual experiencing them. Willard Van Orman Quine used many of radical behaviorism's ideas in his study of knowing and language.•Teleological: Post-Skinnerian, purposive, close to microeconomics. Focuses on objective observation as opposedto cognitive processes.•Theoretical: Post-Skinnerian, accepts observable internal states ("within the skin" once meant "unobservable," butwith modern technology we are not so constrained); dynamic, but eclectic in choice of theoretical structures,emphasizes parsimony.•Biological: Post-Skinnerian, centered on perceptual and motor modules of behavior, theory of behavior systems.•Psychological behaviorismPB (Arthur W. Staats: First general behaviorism that centers on human behavior.Created time-out, token-reinforcement and other methods,analyses,findings and theory that helped found

Behaviorism2behavioral child development, education, abnormal, and clinical areas--also terming this behavioral analysis in1963. PB laid the basis for cognitive behavior therapy, provides basic theory and research that unifies emotionaland behavioral conditioning, and introduces new avenues for basic and applied behavior analysis.<Staats, A.W.,with contributions from C.K. Staats. (1963). Complex human behavior. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Staats, A.W. (1968). Learning, language,and cognitiion. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston>Two subtypes are:•Hullian and post-Hullian: theoretical, group data, not dynamic, physiological;•Purposive: Tolman's behavioristic anticipation of cognitive psychology

Definition

B.F. Skinner was influential in defining radical behaviorism, a philosophy codifying the basis of his school of research (named the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, or EAB.) While EAB differs from other approaches tobehavioral research on numerous methodological and theoretical points, radical behaviorism departs frommethodological behaviorism most notably in accepting feelings, states of mind and introspection as existent andscientifically treatable. This is done by identifying them as something non-dualistic, and here Skinner takes adivide-and-conquer approach, with some instances being identified with bodily conditions or behavior, and othersgetting a more extended "analysis" in terms of behavior. However, radical behaviorism stops short of identifyingfeelings as causes of behavior.

[1]

Among other points of difference were a rejection of the reflex as a model of allbehavior and a defense of a science of behavior complementary to but independent of physiology. Radicalbehaviorism has considerable overlap with other western philosophical positions such as American pragmatism.

[8]

Experimental and conceptual innovations

This essentially philosophical position gained strength from the success of Skinner's early experimental work withrats and pigeons, summarized in his books

The Behavior of Organisms

[9]

and

Schedules of Reinforcement

.

[10]

Of particular importance was his concept of the operant response, of which the canonical example was the rat'slever-press. In contrast with the idea of a physiological or reflex response, an operant is a class of structurally distinctbut functionally equivalent responses. For example, while a rat might press a lever with its left paw or its right pawor its tail, all of these responses operate on the world in the same way and have a common consequence. Operantsare often thought of as species of responses, where the individuals differ but the class coheres in its function-sharedconsequences with operants and reproductive success with species. This is a clear distinction between Skinner'stheory and S

–

R theory.Skinner's empirical work expanded on earlier research on trial-and-error learning by researchers such as Thorndikeand Guthrie with both conceptual reformulations

—

Thorndike's notion of a stimulus

–

response "association" or"connection" was abandoned; and methodological ones

—

the use of the "free operant," so called because the animalwas now permitted to respond at its own rate rather than in a series of trials determined by the experimenterprocedures. With this method, Skinner carried out substantial experimental work on the effects of different schedulesand rates of reinforcement on the rates of operant responses made by rats and pigeons. He achieved remarkablesuccess in training animals to perform unexpected responses, to emit large numbers of responses, and to demonstratemany empirical regularities at the purely behavioral level. This lent some credibility to his conceptual analysis. It islargely his conceptual analysis that made his work much more rigorous than his peers, a point which can be seenclearly in his seminal work

Are Theories of Learning Necessary?

in which he criticizes what he viewed to betheoretical weaknesses then common in the study of psychology. An important descendant of the experimentalanalysis of behavior is the Society for Quantitative Analysis of Behavior.

[11]

Behaviorism3

Relation to language

As Skinner turned from experimental work to concentrate on the philosophical underpinnings of a science of behavior, his attention turned to human languagewith

Verbal Behavior

[12]

and other language-relatedpublications;

[13]

Verbal Behavior

laid out a vocabulary and theory for functional analysis of verbal behavior, andwas strongly criticized in a review by Noam Chomsky.

[14]

Skinner did not respond in detail but claimed thatChomsky failed to understand his ideas,

[15]

and the disagreements between the two and the theories involved havebeen further discussed.

[16]

[17]

In addition; innate theory is opposed to behaviorist theory which claims that languageis a set of habits that can be acquired by means of conditioning. According to some, thisprocess that the behavioristsdefine is a very slow and gentle process to explain a phenomenon complicated as language learning. Whatwas important for a behaviorist's analysis of human behavior was not language acquisition so much as the interactionbetween language and overt behavior. In an essay republished in his 1969 book

Contingencies of Reinforcement

,

[18]

Skinner took the view that humans could construct linguistic stimuli that would then acquire control over theirbehavior in the same way that external stimuli could. The possibility of such "instructional control" over behaviormeant that contingencies of reinforcement would not always produce the same effects on human behavior as theyreliably do in other animals. The focus of a radical behaviorist analysis of human behavior therefore shifted to anattempt to understand the interaction between instructional control and contingency control, and also to understandthe behavioral processes that determine what instructions are constructed and what control they acquire overbehavior. Recently a new line of behavioral research on language was started under the name of Relational FrameTheory.

Molar versus molecular behaviorism

Skinner's view of behavior is most often characterized as a "molecular" view of behavior; that is, behavior can bedecomposed into atomistic parts or molecules. This view is inconsistent with Skinner's complete description of behavior as delineated in other works, including his 1981 article "Selection by Consequences."

[19]

Skinner proposedthat a complete account of behavior requires understanding of selection history at three levels: biology (the naturalselection or phylogeny of the animal); behavior (the reinforcement history or ontogeny of the behavioral repertoireof the animal); and for some species, culture (the cultural practices of the social group to which the animal belongs).This whole organism then interacts with its environment. Molecular behaviorists use notions from meliorationtheory, negative power function discounting or additive versions of negative power function discounting.

[20]

Molar behaviorists, such as Howard Rachlin, Richard Herrnstein, and William Baum, argue that behavior cannot beunderstood by focusing on events in the moment. That is, they argue that behavior is best understood as the ultimateproduct of an organism's history and that molecular behaviorists are committing a fallacy by inventing fictitiousproximal causes for behavior. Molar behaviorists argue that standard molecular constructs, such as "associativestrength," are better replaced by molar variables such as rate of reinforcement.

[21]

Thus, a molar behaviorist woulddescribe "loving someone" as a pattern of loving behavior over time; there is no isolated, proximal cause of lovingbehavior, only a history of behaviors (of which the current behavior might be an example) that can be summarized as"love."

Behaviorism in philosophy

Behaviorism is a psychological movement that can be contrasted with philosophy of mind. The basic premise of

radical behaviorism

is that the study of behavior should be a natural science, such as chemistry or physics, withoutany reference to hypothetical inner states of organisms as causes for their behavior. A modern example of suchanalysis would be Fantino and colleagues' work on behavioral approaches to reasoning.

[22]

Other varieties, such as

theoretical behaviorism

, permit internal states, but do not require them to be mental or have any relation tosubjective experience. Behaviorism takes a functional view of behavior.

Behaviorism4There are points of view within philosophy of language and analytic philosophy that have called themselves, or havebeen called by others, behaviorist. When language is investigated, life forms will be involved. Linguistical behavior

is

the "intelligent design"of nature. Itis sometimes argued that Ludwig Wittgenstein, defended a behaviorist position(e.g., the

beetle in a box

argument), but while there are important relations between his thought and behaviorism, theclaim that he was a behaviorist is quite controversial. Mathematician Alan Turing is also sometimes considered abehaviorist, but he himself did not make this identification. In

logical behaviorism

(as held, e.g., by Rudolf Carnapand Carl Hempel), the meaning of psychological statements are their verification conditions, which consist of performed overt behavior. W.V. Quine made use of a type of behaviorism, influenced by some of Skinner's ideas, inhis own work on language. Gilbert Ryle defended a distinct strain of philosophical behaviorism, sketched in his book

The Concept of Mind

. Ryle's central claim was that instances of dualism frequently represented "category mistakes,"and hence that they were really misunderstandings of the use of ordinary language. Daniel Dennett likewiseacknowledges himself to be a type of behaviorist,

[23]

though he offers extensive criticism of radical behaviorism andrefutes Skinner's rejection of the value of intentional idioms and the possibility of free will (see "Skinner Skinned" inBrainstorms).

21st century behavior analysis

As of 2007, modern-day behaviorism, known as "behavior analysis," is a thriving field. The Association forBehavior Analysis: International (ABAI) currently has 32 state and regional chapters within the United States.Approximately 30 additional chapters have also developed throughout Europe, Asia, South America, and the SouthPacific. In addition to 34 annual conferences whicn afre helod at the end oof hte day The interests among behavioranalysts today are wide ranging, as a review of the 30 Special Interest Groups (SIGs) within ABAI indicates. Suchinterests include everything from developmental disabilities and autism, to cultural psychology, clinical psychology,verbal behavior, Organizational Behavior Management (OBM; behavior analytic I

–

O psychology). OBM hasdeveloped a particularly strong following within behavior analysis, as evidenced by the formation of the OBMNetwork and the influential

Journal of Organizational Behavior Management

(JOBM; recently rated the 3rd highestimpact journal in applied psychology by ISI JOBM rating).Modern behavior analysis has also witnessed a massive resurgence in research and applications related to languageand cognition, with the development of Relational Frame Theory (RFT; described as a "Post-Skinnerian account of language and cognition").

[24]

RFT also forms the empirical basis for the highly successful and data-drivenAcceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). In fact, researchers and practitioners in RFT/ACT have becomesufficiently prominent that they have formed their own specialized organization, known as the Association forContextual Behavioral Science (ACBS).Some of the current prominent behavior analytic journals include the

Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis

(JABA),the

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior

(JEAB) JEAB website, the

Journal of Organizational Behavior Management

(JOBM),

Behavior and Social Issues

(BSI), as well as the

Psychological Record

. Currently, the U.S.has 14 ABAI accredited MA and PhD programs for comprehensive study in behavior analysis.

Behavior analysis and culture

Cultural analysis has always been at the philosophical core of radical behaviorism from the early days (as seen inSkinner's

Walden Two

,

Science & Human Behavior

,

Beyond Freedom & Dignity

, and

About Behaviorism

.)During the 1980s, behavior analysts, most notably Sigrid Glenn, had a productive interchange with culturalanthropologist Marvin Harris (the most notable proponent of "Cultural Materialism") regarding interdisciplinarywork. Very recently, behavior analysts have produced a set of basic exploratory experiments in an effort toward thisend.

[25]

Behaviorism is also frequently used within game development, although some consider this applicationcontroversial.

[26]

Behaviorism5

List of notable behaviorists

•Alan E. Kazdin•Albert Bandura•Edwin Ray Guthrie•Richard J. Herrnstein•Clark L. Hull•Ivan Pavlov•B.F. Skinner•Edward Lee Thorndike•Edward C. Tolman•Murray Sidman•John B. Watson•Ole Ivar Lovaas•Steven C. Hayes•Donald Baer

Notes

[1]Skinner, B.F. (16 April 1984). "The operational analysis of psychological terms" (http://cat.

inist.

fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=9212556).

Behavioral and brain sciences

(Print)

7

(4): 547

–

81. . Retrieved 2008-01-10.[2]http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/behaviorism/ [3]Baum, William M. (1994).

Understanding behaviorism: science, behavior, and culture

. New York, NY: HarperCollins College Publishers.ISBN 0-06-500286-5.[4]Fraley, L.F. (2001). "Strategic interdisciplinary relations between a natural science community and a psychology community" (http://www.baojournal.

com) (pdf).

The Behavior Analyst Today

2

(4): 209

–

324. . Retrieved 2008-01-10.[5]Gazzaniga, Michael (2010).

Psychological Science

. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. pp. 19. ISBN 9780393934212.[6]Friesen, N. (2005). Mind and Machine: Ethical and Epistemological Implications for Research. Thompson Rivers University, B.C., Canada.[7]Waldrop, M.M. (2002).

The Dream Machine: JCR Licklider and the revolution that made computing personal

. New York: Penguin Books.(pp. 139

–

40).[8]Moxley, R.A. (2004). "Pragmatic selectionism: The philosophy of behavior analysis" (http://www.

baojournal.

com) (pdf).

The Behavior Analyst Today

5

(1): 108

–

25. . Retrieved 2008-01-10.[9]Skinner, B.F. (1991).

The Behavior of Organisms

. Copley Pub Group. p. 473. ISBN 0-87411-487-X.[10]Cheney, Carl D.; Ferster, Charles B. (1997).

Schedules of Reinforcement (B.F. Skinner Reprint Series)

. Acton, MA: Copley PublishingGroup. p. 758. ISBN 0-87411-828-X.[11]Commons, M.L. (2001). "A short history of the Society for the Quantitative Analysis of Behavior" (http://www.

baojournal.

com) (pdf).

Behavior Analyst Today

2

(3): 275

–

9. . Retrieved 2008-01-10.[12]Skinner, Burrhus Frederick (1957).

Verbal Behavior

. Acton, Massachusetts: Copley Publishing Group. ISBN 1-58390-021-7.[13]Skinner, B.F. (1969).

An operant analysis of problem-solving

. pp. 133

–

57.; chapter in Skinner, B.F. (1969).

Contingencies of reinforcement:a theoretical analysis

. Appleton-Century-Crofts. p. 283. ISBN 0-13-171728-6.[14]Chomsky, Noam; Skinner, B.F. (1959). "A Review of B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior" (http://www.

chomsky.

info/articles/1967----.htm).

Language

35

(35): 26

–

58. doi:10.2307/411334. JSTOR 411334. .[15]Skinner, B.F. (1972). "I Have Been Misunderstood.".

Center Magazine

(March

–

April): 63.[16]MacCorquodale, K. (1970). "On Chomsky's Review of Skinner's VERBAL BEHAVIOR" (https://www.

behavior.

org/ computer-modeling/maccorquodale/maccorquodale2.cfm).

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior

13

(1): 83

–

99.doi:10.1901/jeab.1970.13-83. . Retrieved 2008-01-10.[17]Stemmer, N. (1990). "Skinner's verbal behavior, Chomsky's review, and mentalism".

J Exp Anal Behav

54

(3): 307

–

15.doi:10.1901/jeab.1990.54-307. PMC 1323000. PMID 2103585.[18]Skinner, B.F. (1969).

Contingencies of reinforcement: a theoretical analysis

. Appleton-Century-Crofts. p. 283. ISBN 0-13-171728-6.[19]Skinner, B.F (31 July 1981). "Selection by Consequences" (http://www.

psychology.

uiowa.

edu/Classes/31174/Documents/Selection byConsequences.

pdf).

Science

213

(4507): 501

–

4. doi:10.1126/science.7244649. PMID 7244649. . Retrieved 14 August 2010.[20]Fantino, E. (2000). "Delay-reduction theory

—

the case for temporal context: comment on Grace and Savastano (2000)".

J Exp Psychol Gen

129

(4): 444

–

6. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.129.4.444. PMID 11142857.[21]Baum, W.M. (2003). "The molar view of behavior and its usefulness in behavior analysis" (http://www.

doaj.

org/doaj?func=abstract&id=206927).

Behavior Analyst Today

4

: 78

–

81. . Retrieved 2008-01-10.

Behaviorism6

[22]Fantino, E.; Stolarz-Fantino, S.; Navarro, A. (2003). "Logical fallacies: A behavioral approach to reasoning" (http://www.

doaj.

org/ doaj?func=abstract&id=207433).

The Behavior Analyst Today

4

: 109

–

17. . Retrieved 2008-01-10.[23]Dennett, D.C.. "The Message is: There is no Medium" (http://ase.

tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/msgisno.

htm). Tufts University. . Retrieved2008-01-10.[24]Hayes, S.C.; Barnes-Holmes, D. & Roche, B. (2001) Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian account of human language andcognition. Kluwer Academic: New York.[25]Ward, Todd A.; Eastman, Raymond; Ninness, Chris (2009). "An Experimental Analysis of Cultural Materialism: The Effects of VariousModes of Production on Resource Sharing" (http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.

php/bsi/article/view/1950/2185).

Behavior and Social Issues

18

: 1

–

23. .[26]Jon Radoff (2011). "Gamification, Behaviorism and Bullsh$!" (http://radoff.com/blog/2011/08/09/gamification-behaviorism-bullshit/).

Radoff.com

. .

Further reading

•Baum, W.M. (2005)

Understanding behaviorism: Behavior, Culture and Evolution

. Blackwell.•Ferster, C.B. & Skinner, B.F. (1957).

Schedules of reinforcement

. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.•Mills, John A.,

Control: A History of Behavioral Psychology

, Paperback Edition, New York University Press2000.•Lattal, K.A. & Chase, P.N. (2003) "Behavior Theory and Philosophy". Plenum.•Plotnik, Rod. (2005)

Introduction to Psychology

. Thomson-Wadsworth (ISBN 0-534-63407-9).•Rachlin, H. (1991)

Introduction to modern behaviorism.

(3rd edition.) New York: Freeman.•Skinner, B.F.

Beyond Freedom & Dignity

, Hackett Publishing Co, Inc 2002.•Skinner, B.F. (1938).

The behavior of organisms

. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.•Skinner, B.F. (1945). "The operational analysis of psychological terms".

Psychological Review

52

(270

–

7):290

–

4.•Skinner, B.F. (1953).

Science and Human Behavior

(ISBN 0-02-929040-6) Online version (http://www.bfskinner.

org/f/Science_and_Human_Behavior.pdf).•Skinner, B.F. (1957).

Verbal behavior

. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.•Skinner, B.F. (1969).

Contingencies of reinforcement: a theoretical analysis

. New York:Appleton-Century-Crofts.•Skinner, B.F. (31 July 1981). "Selection by Consequences" (http://www.

psychology.

uiowa.

edu/Classes/ 31174/Documents/Selection by Consequences.pdf).

Science

213

(4507): 501

–

4. doi:10.1126/science.7244649.PMID 7244649. Retrieved 14 August 2010.•Staddon, J. (2001)

The new behaviorism: Mind, mechanism and society.

Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press. pp.xiii, 1

–

211.•Watson, J.B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it.

Psychological Review

, 20, 158

–

177. ( on-line (http:/ /psychclassics.

yorku.

ca/Watson/views.htm)).•Watson, J.B. (1919).

Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist

.•Watson, J.B. (1924).

Behaviorism

.•Zuriff, G.E. (1985).

Behaviorism: A Conceptual Reconstruction

(http://www.

questia.

com/PM.

qst?a=o&d=86092256), Columbia University Press.•LeClaire, J. and Rushin, J.P. (2010)

Behavioral Analytics For Dummies.

Wiley. (ISBN 978-0-470-58727-0).

Behaviorism7

External links

•Behaviorism (http://plato.

stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism) entry by George Graham in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

•

Dictionary of the History of Ideas

: (http://etext.

lib.

virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.

cgi?id=dv1-30)Behaviorism•Books and Journal Articles On Behaviorism (http://www.questia.com/library/psychology/ other-types-of-psychology/behaviorism.

jsp)•Wuerzburg University: behaviourism (http://www.

biozentrum.

uni-wuerzburg.de/genetics/behavior/learning/ behaviorism.

html)•B.F. Skinner Foundation (http://www.bfskinner.

org)•Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies (http://www.

behavior.

org)•Skinner's Theories (http://psychclassics.

yorku.ca/Skinner/Theories)•APA Behaviour Analysis (http://www.

apa.

org/divisions/div25/)•Association for Behavior Analysis (http://www.abainternational.org/)•Theory of Behavioral Anthropology (Documents No. 9 and 10 in English) (http://homepage.uibk.

ac.

at/ ~c720126/humanethologie/ws/medicus/block1/inhalt.html)•California Association for Behavior Analysis (http://www.calaba.

org)•Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (http://www.

contextualpsychology.

org)•Behavior Analysis Online Tutorials (http://foxylearning.

com)

Cartesian Dualism

René Descartes's illustration of dualism. Inputs arepassed on by the sensory organs to the epiphysis in thebrain and from there to the immaterial spirit.

In philosophy of mind,

dualism

is a set of views about therelationship between mind and matter, which begins with theclaim that mental phenomena are, in some respects,non-physical.

[1]

While Aristotle shared Plato's view of multiple souls, (ψυχή

psychí

) their hierarchical arrangement corresponded to distinctivefunctions of plants, animals and people: a nutritive soul of growthand metabolism, shared by all three, a perceptive soul of pain,pleasure and desire, shared by animals and people only, and thefaculty of reason, unique to humanity. In his view, a soul is thehylomorphic form a viable organism, where each level of thehierarchy formally supervenes upon the substance of the precedinglevel. Thus, for Aristotle, all three souls perish when the livingorganism dies.

[2]

[3]

For Plato however, the soul migrates to a newbody after death and is not identified with the physical body.

[4]

Dualism is closely associated with the philosophy of RenéDescartes (1641), which holds that the mind is a nonphysicalsubstance. Descartes was the first to clearly identify the mind withconsciousness and self-awareness and to distinguish this from the brain, which was the seat of intelligence. Hence,he was the first to formulate the mind-body problem in the form in which it exists today.

[5]

Dualism is contrastedwith various kinds of monism, including phenomenalism. Substance dualism is contrasted with all forms of materialism, but property dualism may be considered a form of emergent materialism and thus would only becontrasted with non-emergent materialism.

[6]

This article discusses the various forms of dualism and the arguments

Cartesian Dualism8which have been made both for and against this thesis.

Historical overview

Plato and Aristotle

In the dialogue

Phaedo

, Plato formulated his famous Theory of Forms as distinct and immaterial substances of whichthe objects and other phenomena that we perceive in the world are nothing more than mere shadows.

[4]

Plato makes it clear, in the

Phaedo

, that the Forms are the

universalia ante res

, i.e. they are ideal universals, bywhich we are able to understand the world. In his allegory of the cave Plato likens the achievement of philosophicalunderstanding to emerging into the sun from a dark cave, where only vague shadows of what lies beyond that prisonare cast dimly upon the wall. Plato's forms are non-physical and non-mental. They exist nowhere in time or space,but neither do they exist in the mind, nor in the pleroma of matter; rather, matter is said to

“

participate

”

in form(μεθεξις

methexis

). It remained unclear however, even to Aristotle, exactly what Plato intended by that.Aristotle argued at length against many aspects of Plato's forms, creating his own doctrine of hylomorphism whereinform and matter coexist. Ultimately however, Aristotle's aim was to perfect a theory of forms, rather than to reject it.Although Aristotle strongly rejected the independent existence Plato attributed to forms, his metaphysics do agreewith Plato's

a priori

considerations quite often however. For example, Aristotle's argument that changeless, eternalsubstantial form is necessarily immaterial. Because matter provides a stable substratum for a change in form, matteralways has the potential to change. Thus, if given an eternity in which to do so, it

will

, necessarily, exercise thatpotential.Part of Aristotle's

psychology

, the study of the soul, is his account of the ability of humans to reason and the abilityof animals to perceive. In both cases, perfect copies of forms are acquired, either by direct impression of environmental forms, in the case of perception, or else by virtue of contemplation, understanding and recollection.He believed the mind can literally assume any form being contemplated or experienced, and it was unique in itsability to become a blank slate, having no essential form. As thoughts of earth are not heavy, any more than thoughtsof fire are casually efficient, they provide an immaterial complement for the formless mind.

[2]

From Neoplatonism to Scholasticism

In the early Middle Ages, there was a resurgence of what is now called Neoplatonism, which is generally based onPlato's philosophy. Neoplatonism exerted a considerable influence on Christianity, as did the philosophy of Aristotlevia scholasticism.

[7]

In the scholastic tradition of Saint Thomas Aquinas, officially incorporated into Roman Catholic dogma, the soulremains the substance of a human being, as it did per Aristotle. Aquinas, however, provided for the separation of thesoul from the body, although the soul

by itself

, was understood

not

to be a person (substance). Hence, Aquinassuggested that "soul of St. Peter pray for us" would be more appropriate than "St. Peter pray for us", because allthings connected with his person, including memories, ended with his corporeal life.

[8]

The Catholic doctrine of the resurrection of the body states that at the second coming, the souls of the departed willbe reunited with their bodies as a whole person (substance) and witness to the apocalypse. The thorough consistencybetween dogma and Aristotelian physics evident here

[9]

resulted from a belief that there can be only one truth.Consistency with science and logic remained a high priority for centuries, and a university doctorate in theologygenerally included the entire science curriculum as a prerequisite. This doctrine is not universally accepted byChristians today. Many believe that one's immortal soul goes directly to Heaven upon death of the body.

[10]

Cartesian Dualism17of the brain, including Transcranial magnetic stimulation).

[39]

Argument from biological development

Another common argument against dualism consists in the idea that since human beings (both phylogenetically andontogenetically) begin their existence as entirely physical or material entities and since nothing outside of thedomain of the physical is added later on in the course of development, then we must necessarily end up being fullydeveloped material beings. Phylogenetically, the human species evolved, as did all other species, from a single cellmade up of matter. Since all the events that later occurred which ended up in the formation of our species can beexplained through the processes of random mutation and natural selection, the difficulty for the dualist is to explainwhere and why there could have intervened some non-material, non-physical event in this process of naturalevolution. Ontogenetically, we begin life as a simple fertilized ovum. There is nothing non-material or

mentalistic

involved in conception, the formation of the blastula, the gastrula, and so on. Our development can be explainedentirely in terms of the accumulation of matter through the processes of nutrition. The postulation of a non-physicalmind would seem superfluous.

Argument from brain scans' ability to discern mental states

The decisions that a person makes can, in at least some contexts, be detected up to 10 seconds earlier by means of scanning their brain activity.

[40]

Mental imagery can also be detected

[41]

Argument from simplicity

The argument from simplicity is probably the simplest and also the most common form of argument against dualismof the mental. The dualist is always faced with the question of why anyone should find it necessary to believe in theexistence of two, ontologically distinct, entities (mind and brain), when it seems possible and would make for asimpler thesis to test against scientific evidence, to explain the same events and properties in terms of one. It is aheuristic principle in science and philosophy not to assume the existence of more entities than is necessary for clearexplanation and prediction (see Occam's razor).This argument was criticized by Peter Glassen in a debate with J. J. C. Smart in the pages of

Philosophy

in the late1970s and early 1980s.

[42]

Glassen argued that, because it is not a physical entity, Occam's Razor cannot consistentlybe appealed to by a physicalist or materialist as a justification of mental states or events, such as the belief thatdualism is false. The idea is that Occam's razor may not be as 'unrestricted' as it is normally described (applying toall qualitative postulates, even abstract ones) but instead concrete (only applies to physical objects). If one appliesOccam's Razor unrestrictedly, then it recommends monism until pluralism either receives more support, or until it isdisproved. If one applies Occam's Razor only concretely, then it may not be used on abstract concepts (this route,however, has serious consequences for selecting between hypotheses

about

the abstract).

[43]

Cartesian Dualism18

References

[1]Hart, W.D. (1996) "Dualism", in

A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind

, ed. Samuel Guttenplan, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 265-7.[2]Aristotle (c. mid 4th century BC)

On the Soul (De anima)

, ed. R.D. Hicks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907; Books II-III trans.D.W. Hamlyn, Clarendon Aristotle Series, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968.[3]Aristotle (c. mid 4th century BC)

Metaphysics (Metaphysica)

, ed. W.D. Ross, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924, 2 vols; Books IV-VI,trans. C.A. Kirwan, Clarendon Aristotle Series, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971; Books VII-VIII trans. D. Bostock, Clarendon AristotleSeries, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994; Books XIII-XIV trans. J. Annas, Clarendon Aristotle Series, Oxford: Oxford University Press,1976.[4]Plato (390s-347 BC)

Platonis Opera

, vol. 1,

Euthyphro, Apologia Socratis, Crito, Phaedo, Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophistes, Politicus

, ed. E.A.Duke, W.F. Hicken, W.S.M. Nicoll, D.B. Robinson and J.C.G. Strachan, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.[5]Descartes, R. (1641)

Meditations on First Philosophy

, in

The Philosophical Writings of René Descartes

, trans. by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, vol. 2, pp. 1-62.[6]Robinson, Howard, "Dualism",

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(Fall 2003 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.

stanford.edu/archives/fall2003/entries/dualism/.[7]Whittaker (1901)

The Neo-Platonists

, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[8]Aquinas, Thomas (1266-71)

Summa Theologica

. trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2d, rev. ed., 22 vols., London: Burns,Oates & Washbourne, 1912-36; reprinted in 5 vols., Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981.[9]"Apostles' Creed".

Catechism of the Catholic Church

.[10]Spong, John Selby (1994)

Resurrection: Myth or Reality

, New York: HarperCollins Publishing. ISBN 0-06-067546-2.[11]Schmaltz, Tad, "Nicolas Malebranche",

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(Summer 2002 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, http:// plato.

stanford.

edu/archives/sum2002/entries/malebranche/ [12]Chalmers, David, "The Matrix as Metaphysics", http://consc.net/papers/matrix.

html, Note 6.[13]Searle, John (1983) "Why I Am Not a Property Dualist", http://ist-socrates.

berkeley.

edu/~jsearle/132/PropertydualismFNL.

doc.[14]Robinson, H. (2003) "Dualism", in

The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind

, ed. S. Stich and T. Warfield, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 85-101.[15]Donald Davidson (1980)

Essays on Actions and Events

, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-924627-0.[16]Fodor, Jerry (1968)

Psychological Explanation

, Random House. ISBN 0-07-021412-3.[17]Gallagher, S. 2006. "Where's the action? Epiphenomenalism and the problem of free will". In W. Banks, S. Pockett, and S. Gallagher.

DoesConsciousness Cause Behavior? An Investigation of the Nature of Intuition

(109-124). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.[18]Nagel, Thomas (1986)

The View From Nowhere

, New York: Oxford University Press.[19]Jackson, Frank (1977)

Perception: A Representative Theory

, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[20]Lewis, David (1988) "What Experience Teaches", in

Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology

, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1999, pp. 262-290.[21]Chalmers, David (1997).

The Conscious Mind

. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511789-1.[22]Dennett, Daniel (1995). "The unimagined preposterousness of zombies".

J Consciousness Studies

2

: 322\u20136.[23]Dennett, Daniel (1991).

Consciousness Explained

. Little, Brown and Co.. p. 95. ISBN 0316180653.[24]Madell, G. (1981)

The Identity of the Self

, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.[25]Shoemaker, S. and Swinburne, R. (1984)

Personal Identity

, Oxford: Blackwell.[26]Victor Reppert

C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea

. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8308-2732-3[27]A Response to Richard Carrier's Review of C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea (http://www.

infidels.

org/library/modern/darek_barefoot/ dangerous.

html)[28]The Cardinal Difficulty Of Naturalism (http://www.

philosophy.uncc.

edu/mleldrid/Intro/csl3.

html)[29]Lewis, C.S (1947).

Miracles

. ISBN 0688173691.[30]Baker, Gordon and Morris, Katherine J. (1996)

Descartes' Dualism

, London: Routledge.[31]Lycan, William (1996) "Philosophy of Mind" in

The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy

, ed. Nicholas Bunnin and E. P. Tsui-James,Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.[32]Maher, Michael (1909) "The Law of Conservation of Energy",

Catholic Encyclopedia

, vol. 5, pp. 422 ff, http://www.

newadvent.

org/ cathen/05422a.

htm.[33]Popper, Karl R. and Eccles, John C. (1977)

The Self and Its Brain

, Berlin: Springer.[34]Churchland, Paul (1988)

Matter and Consciousness

, Revised Edition, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.[35]Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Emergent Properties", from text: "Here, Hasker, is using the term to express a view structurally likeone (vitalism) that the British emergentists were anxious to disavow" (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/properties-emergent/)[36]"Brain tumour causes uncontrollable paedophilia" (http://www.

newscientist.

com/article/ dn2943-brain-tumour-causes-uncontrollable-paedophilia.

htmlNewScientist.

com,)[37]Eagleman, Philosophy Bites Podcast, "David Eagleman on Morality and the Brain" (http://philosophybites.

com/2011/05/ david-eagleman-on-morality-and-the-brain.

htmlDavid)[38]. PMID 11190987.[39]

Alterations of sociomoral judgement and glucose utilization in the frontomedial cortex induced by electrical stimulation of the subthalamicnucleus (STN) in Parkinsonian patients (2004):

http://www.egms.de/de/meetings/dgnc2004/04dgnc0207.

shtml

Cartesian Dualism19

[40](http://www.

nature.

com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/abs/nn.2112.html)[41](http://despolab.

berkeley.

edu/files/publications/pdf/imagerot.pdf)[42]Glassen, Peter (1976) "J. J. C. Smart, Materialism and Occam's Razor",

Philosophy

51, pp. 349-352; J. J. C. Smart (1978) "Is Occam's Razora Physical Thing?",

Philosophy

53, pp. 382-385; Peter Glassen (1983) "Smart, Materialism and Believing",

Philosophy

58, pp. 95-101.[43]Plato Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Simplicity. Excerpt:

"Perhaps scientists apply an unrestricted version of Occam's Razor to that portion of reality in which they are interested, namely the concrete, causal, spatiotemporal world. Or perhaps scientists apply a

‘

concretized

’

version of Occam's Razor unrestrictedly. Which is the case? The answer determines which general philosophical principle we end up with:ought we to avoid the multiplication of objects of whatever kind, or merely the multiplication of concrete objects? The distinction here iscrucial for a number of central philosophical debates. Unrestricted Occam's Razor favors monism over dualism, and nominalism over platonism. By contrast,

‘

concretized

’

Occam's Razor has no bearing on these debates, since the extra entities in each case are not concrete"

(http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/simplicity/)

Further reading

•Bracken, Patrick, and Thomas, Philip (December 21, 2002) "Time to move beyond the mind-body split" (http:// www.

bmj.

com/cgi/content/full/325/7378/1433), editorial, British Medical Journal 325, pp. 1433

–

1434. Acontroversial perspective on the use and possible overuse of the Mind-Body split and its application in medicalpractice.•Spenard, Michael (April 11, 2011) "Dueling with Dualism: the forlorn quest for the immaterial soul" (http:// www.

memeoid.

net/books/Spenard/Dueling_with_Dualism-Spenard.

pdf), essay. An historical account of mindbody duality and a comprehensive conceptual and empirical critique on the position. ISBN 978-0-578-08288-2•Amoroso, Richard L. (2010)

Complementarity of Mind and Body: Realizing the Dream of Descartes, Einstein and Eccles

, book. History making volume with first comprehensive model of dualism-interactionism, that is alsoempirically testable. ISBN 978-1-61668-203-3

External links

•Dualism (http://philosophy.

uwaterloo.

ca/MindDict/dualism.html) in the online Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind•Dualism (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/dualism/) in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

•Zombies (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/zombies/) in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

•Mind and body, Rene Descartes to William James (http://serendip.

brynmawr.

edu/Mind/Table.

html)•Online Papers on Materialism and Dualism (http://www.

u.

arizona.edu/~chalmers/online1.html#materialism)

Connectivism20

Connectivism

was introduced as a theory of learning based on the premise that knowledge exists in the world ratherthan in the head of an individual. Connectivism proposes a perspective similar to the Activity theory of Vygotsky asit regards knowledge to exist within systems which are accessed through people participating in activities. It alsobears some similarity with the Social Learning Theory of Bandura that proposes that people learn through contact.The add-on "a learning theory for the digital age", that appears on Siemens paper

[1]

indicates the special importancethat is given to the effect technology has on how people live, how they communicate, and how they learn.

Aspects

One aspect of connectivism is the use of a network with nodes and connections as a central metaphor for learning.

[2]

In this metaphor, a node is anything that can be connected to another node within a network such as an organisation:information, data, feelings, images. Connectivism sees learning as the process of creating connections anddeveloping a network. Not all connections are of equal strength in this metaphor; in fact, many connections may bequite weak. The idea of organisations being cognitive systems where knowledge is distributed across a network of nodes can be traced back to the work on the Perceptron. This metaphor is directly borrowed from Connectionism, "aparadigm in cognitive sciences that sees mental or behavioral phenomena as the emergent processes of interconnected networks of simple units" (reproduced from Connectionism).This network metaphor allows for a notion of "know-where" (the understanding of where to find the knowledgewhen it is needed) to supplement to the ones of "know-how" and "know-what" that make the cornerstones of manytheories of learning.

Principles of connectivism

•Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.•Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.•Learning may reside in non-human appliances.•Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known•Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.•Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.•Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.•Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information isseen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due toalterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

Connectivist teaching methods

Summing up connectivist teaching and learning, Downes states: "to teach is to model and demonstrate, to learn is topractice and reflect."

[3]

In 2008, Siemens and Downes delivered an online course called "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge"

[4]

. Itcovered Connectivism as content while attempting to implement some of their ideas. The course was free and opento anyone who wished to participate, with over 2000 people worldwide signing up. The phrase "Massive OpenOnline Course" (MOOC) was coined to describe this open model.

[5]

All course content was available through RSSfeeds, and learners could participate with their choice of tools: threaded discussions in Moodle, blog posts, SecondLife, and synchronous online meetings. The course was repeated in 2009 and in 2011.

Connectivism21

Criticisms

The idea that connectivism provides a new theory of learning has not received wide acceptance. Verhagen, forinstance, has argued that connectivism is not a learning theory, but rather is a "pedagogical view."

[6]

.Elaborations on Connectivism fail to include any review of the literatureand no mention of prior work in this area. Itis therefore quitedifficult to evaluate how Connectivism, introduced in the mid-2005, relates to prior theories of social learning. In particular, the notion of Socially Distributed Cognition (Hutchins, 1995), which explored howconnectionist ideas could be applied to social systems. But also other theories that adhere to more classical views of cognition. The Activity theory (Vygotsky, Leont

’

ev, Luria, and others starting in the 1920s) that proposed thatpeople are socio-culturally embedded actors, with learning considered using three features

–

involving a subject (thelearner), an object (the task or activity) and tool or mediating artefacts. The Social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1962)and the assumption that people learn by watching what others do which was elaborated further in the Social learningtheory (Miller and Dollard). The notion of Situated cognition (Greeno & Moore, 1993), that all knowledge is situatedin activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts; knowledge and learning that requires thinking on the flyrather than the storage and retrieval of conceptual knowledge. The concept of Community of practice (Lave &Wenger 1991) - it is through the process of sharing information and experiences with the group that the memberslearn from each other, and have an opportunity to develop themselves personally and professionally. Or even theidea of Collective_intelligence (Lévy, 1994).The absence of reference to prior works makes it difficult to evaluate what their unique contribution is (if any). BillKerr, for instance, believes that, although technology does affect learning environments, existing learning theoriesare sufficient.

[7]

The critique is further elucidated by Kop and Hill

[8]

who concludes that while it does not seem thatconnectivism is a separate learning theory, it "continues to play an important role in the development and emergenceof new pedagogies, where control is shifting from the tutor to an increasingly more autonomous learner."Dr. Mohamed Ally at Athabasca University recognizes that world has changed and become more networked, solearning theories developed prior to these global changes are less relevant. However, he argues that, "What is neededis not a new stand-alone theory for the digital age, but a model that integrates the different theories to guide thedesign of online learning materials."

[9]

.

References

[1]http://www.

itdl.

org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.

htm Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age], International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, Vol. 2 No. 1, Jan 2005[2]http://www.

astd.

org/LC/2005/1105_seimens.htm Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation], Learning Circuits, November 2005[3]Downes, Stephen. "What Connectivism Is" (http://halfanhour.

blogspot.com/2007/02/what-connectivism-is.

html). . Retrieved2009-01-28.[4]Siemens, George; Stephen Downes. "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge" (http://ltc.

umanitoba.

ca/connectivism/). . Retrieved2009-01-28.[5]Siemens, George. "MOOC or Mega-Connectivism Course" (http://ltc.

umanitoba.

ca/connectivism/?p=53). . Retrieved 2009-01-28.[6]Connectivism: a new learning theory? (http://www.surfspace.nl/nl/Redactieomgeving/Publicaties/Documents/Connectivism a newtheory.

pdf), Pløn Verhagen (University of Twente), November 2006[7]which radical discontinuity? (http://billkerr2.blogspot.

com/2007/02/which-radical-discontinuity.

html), Bill Kerr, February 2007[8]Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past? (http://www.irrodl.

org/index.

php/irrodl/article/viewArticle/523/ 1103) Rita Kop, Adrian Hill. In "The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol 9, No 3 (2008), ISSN:1492-3831"[9]Foundations of Educational Theory for Online Learning (http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/ 01_Anderson_2008_Ally-Online_Learning.

pdf), Mohamed Ally. In

The Theory and Practice of Online Learning

, Terry Anderson, Ed., May2008

Connectivism22

External links

•Connectivism: A learning theory for today's learner (http://www.

connectivism.ca/)•Web Presentation (Oral/Slide show) on Connectivism (http://elearnspace.

org/media/WhatIsConnectivism/ player.

html)•Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Online Course support wiki facilitated by George Siemens and StephenDownes (http://ltc.

umanitoba.ca/wiki/Connectivism)•Connectivism: Learning Theory or Pastime for the Self-Amused? (http://www.

elearnspace.

org/Articles/ connectivism_self-amused.htm)•What Connectivism Is (http://halfanhour.blogspot.

com/2007/02/what-connectivism-is.

html)•Spanish Translation of

Knowing Knowledge

(http://www.

nodosele.

com/editorial/)

Direct realism

Direct realism argues we perceive the world directly

The question of

direct

or "naïve"realism, as opposed to

indirect

or"representational" realism, arises in thephilosophy of perception and of mindout of the debate over the nature of conscious experience;

[1]

[2]

theepistemological question of whetherthe world we see around us is the realworld itself or merely an internalperceptual copy of that worldgenerated by neural processes in ourbrain. Naïve realism is known as

direct

realism when developed to counter

indirect

or representative realism, also known as epistemological dualism,

[3]

thephilosophical position that our conscious experience is not of the real world itself but of an internal representation, aminiature virtual-reality replica of the world. Indirect realism is broadly equivalent to the accepted view of perception in natural science that states that we do not and can not perceive the external world as it really is butknow only our ideas and interpretations of the way the world is

[4]

. Representationalism is one of the keyassumptions of cognitivism in psychology. The representational realist would deny that 'first hand knowledge' is acoherent concept, since knowledge is always via some means. Our ideas of the world are interpretations of sensedata derived from an external world that is real (unlike the standpoint of idealism). The alternative, that we haveknowledge of the outside world that is unconstrained by our sense organs and does not require interpretation, wouldappear to be inconsistent with everyday observation.

History

Aristotle was the first to provide a description of indirect realism. In

On the Soul

he describes how the eye must beaffected by changes in an intervening medium rather than by objects themselves and speculates on how senseimpressions can form our experience of seeing, reasoning that an endless regress would occur unless the sense itself were self aware. He concludes by proposing that the mind is the things it thinks. He calls the images in the mind"ideas".Indirect realism has been popular in the history of philosophy and has been developed by many philosophersincluding Bertrand Russell, Baruch Spinoza, René Descartes, and John Locke, the 17th century philosopher who

Direct realism23most prominently advocated this theory. The term he used was not "sense-datum" but "idea". Locke thought objectshad two classes of qualities:•Primary qualities are qualities which are 'explanatorily basic' - which is to say, they can be referred to as theexplanation for other qualities or phenomena without requiring explanation themselves - and they are distinct inthat our sensory experience of them resembles them in reality. (For example, one perceives an object as sphericalprecisely because of the way the atoms of the sphere are arranged.) Primary qualities cannot be removed by eitherthought or physical action, and include mass, movement, and, controversially, solidity (although later proponentsof the distinction between primary and secondary qualities usually discount solidity).•Secondary qualities are qualities which one's experience does not directly resemble; for example, when one seesan object as red, the sensation of seeing redness is not produced by some quality of redness in the object, but bythe arrangement of atoms on the surface of the object which reflects and absorbs light in a particular way.Secondary qualities include colour, smell, and taste.In contemporary philosophy, epistemological dualism has come under sustained attack by philosophers likeWittgenstein (the private language argument) and Wilfrid Sellars in his seminal essay "Empiricism and thePhilosophy of Mind." Indirect realism is argued to be problematical because of Ryle's regress and the homunculusargument. However, recently reliance on the private language argument and the Homunculus Objection has itself come under attack. It can be argued that those who argue for 'inner presence', to use Antti Revonsuo's term,

[5]

are notproposing a private 'referent', with the application of language to it being 'private' and thus unshareable, but a

private

use of

public

language. There is no doubt that each of us has a private understanding of public language, a fact thathas been experimentally proven;

[6]

George Steiner refers to our personal use of language as an 'idiolect', oneparticular to ourselves in its detail.

[7]

The question has to be put how a collective use of language can go on when,not only do we have differing understandings of the words we use, but our sensory registrations differ.

[8]

The reason for continued confusion is that "both direct and indirect realism are frankly incredible, although each isincredible for differentreasons".

[1]

The direct realist view (Gibson, 1972) is incrediblebecause it suggests that we can have experience of ob jects out in the worlddirectly, beyond the sensory surface, as if bypassing the chain of sensory processing. The pattern of electrochemical activity that corresponds to our conscious experience can take aform that reflects the properties of external objects, but our consciousness is necessarily confined to the experienceof those internal effigies of external objects, rather than of external objects themselves. Unless the principle of directperception can be demonstrated in a simple artificial sensory system, this explanation remains as mysterious as theproperty of consciousness it is supposed to explain.

[1]

But the indirect realist view is also incredible, for it suggeststhat the world that we perceive is merely a pattern of energy in the physical brain inside our head. This could onlymean that the head we have come to know as our own is not our true physical head, but merely a miniature copy of inside a copy of the world contained within our true physical skull. The external world and its phenomenal replicacannot be spatially superimposed, for one is inside your physical head, and the other is outside. The existentialvertigo occasioned by this concept of perception is so disorienting that only a handful of researchers have seriouslyentertained this notion or pursued its implications to its logical conclusion. (Kant 1781/1991, Koffka 1935, Köhler1971 p. 125, Russell 1927 pp 137-143, Smythies 1989, 1994, current

[9]

, Harrison 1989, Hoffman 1998, Leharcurrent

[10]

, Hameroff current

[11]

)"

[1]

Direct realism24

Arguments against direct realism

The argument from illusion

Illusion creates a problem for naïve realists as it suggests our sensesare fallible, perceiving things that aren't there. In this illusion, thelines are horizontal, despite how they appear.

This argument was "first offered in a more or less fullyexplicit form in Berkeley (1713)."

[12]

It is also referredto as the problem of conflicting appearances (e.g.Myles Burnyeat's article

Conflicting Appearances

).Informed commonsense tells us that our perceptionsoften depend on our organs of perception. If we hadcompound eyes, as flies do, we would receiveinformation about the visual world in a completelydifferent form. If we had jaundice, things would lookyellow. If we had other sense organs altogether, likeinfra-red detectors or echo-location devices, we canbarely imagine how things would appear to us. Ourcurrent perceptual apparatus is obviously not infallibleand may misrepresent objects to us even when in fullworking order (e.g. the Müller-Lyer illusion): we are all familiar with perceptual illusions of various sorts.Sometimes we think we perceive things which in fact aren

’

t there at all, a more radical case of perceptual error thansimple illusion;

‘

hallucination

’

or

‘

perceptual delusion

’

)."

[13]Illusions are present in nature. Rainbows are an example of aperceptual delusion. "For, unlike an architectural arch, a rainbowrecedes as we approach it, never to be reached."[14]

The argument from illusion seemingly shows the needto posit sense-data as the immediate objects of perception. In cases of illusion or hallucination, theobject has qualities that no public physical object inthat situation has and so must be distinct from any suchobject.

[12]

Naïve realism may accommodate these factsas they stand by virtue of its very vagueness (or

‘

open-texture

’

): it isn

’

t specific or detailed enough to berefuted by such cases.

[13]

A more developed directrealism might respond by showing that various cases of misperception, failed perception, and perceptualrelativity do not make it necessary to suppose thatsense-data exist. When a stick submerged in water looks bent a direct realist is not compelled to say the stick actuallyis bent but can say that the stick can have more than one appearance: a straight stick can look bent when lightreflected from the stick arrives at one's eye in a crooked pattern, but this appearance isn't necessarily a sense-datumin the mind. Similar things can be said about the coin which appears circular from one vantage point and oval-shapedfrom another. Pressing on your eyeball with a finger creates double vision but assuming the existence of twosense-data is unnecessary: the direct realist can say that they have two eyes, each giving them a different view of theworld. Usually the eyes are focused in the same direction; but sometimes they are not.However, this response is presumably based on previously observed data. If one were to be able to observe nothingother than the stick in the water, with no previous information, it would appear that the stick was bent. Visual depthin particular is a set of inferences, not an actual experience of the space between things in a radial direction outwardfrom the observation point.

[15]

If all empirical evidence is based upon observation then the entire developed memoryand knowledge of every perception and of each sense may be as skewed as the bent stick. Since objects withdifferent qualities are experienced from each of the different perspectives there is no apparent experiential basis for

Direct realism25regarding one out of any such set of related perceptual experiences as the one in which the relevant physical object isitself immediately experienced. The most reasonable conclusion is that the experienced object is always distinct fromthe physical object or at least that there is no way to identify which, if any, of the immediately experienced objects isthe physical object itself. Epistemologically it is as though physical objects were never given, whether or not that isin fact the case.

[12]

Another potential counter-example involves vivid hallucinations: phantom elephants, for instance, might beinterpreted as sense-data. A direct realist response would differentiate hallucination from genuine perception: noperception of elephants is going on, only the different and related mental process of hallucination. However if thereare visual images when we hallucinate it seems reasonable that there are visual images when we see. Similarly if dreaming involves visual and auditory images in our minds it seems reasonable to think there are visual and auditoryimages, or sense-data, when we are awake and perceiving things. This argument has been challenged in a number of different ways. First it has been questioned whether there must be some object present that actually has theexperienced qualities, which would then seemingly have to be something like a sense-datum. Why couldn't it be thatthe perceiver issimply in astate of seeming to experience such an object without any object actually being present? Second, in cases of illusion and perceptual relativity there is an object present which is simply misperceived, usuallyin readily explainable ways, and no need to suppose that an additional object is also involved.Third, the last part of the perceptual relativity version of the argument has been challenged by questioning whether there is really noexperiential difference between veridical and non-veridical perception; and byarguing thateven if sense-data areexperienced in non-veridical cases andeven if the difference between veridical and non-veridical cases is, asclaimed, experientially indiscernible, there is still no reason to think that sense-data are the immediate objects of experience in veridical cases. Fourth, do sense-data exist through time or are they momentary? Can they exist whennot being perceived? Are they public or private? Can they be themselves misperceived? Do they exist in minds or arethey extra-mental, even if not physical? On the basis of the intractability of these questions, it has been argued thatthe conclusion of the argument from illusion is unacceptable or even unintelligible, even in the absence of a cleardiagnosis of exactly where and how it goes wrong.

[12]

Direct realists can potentially deny the existence of any such thing as a mental image but this is difficult to maintain,since we seem able to visually imagine all sorts of things with ease. Even if perception does not involve images othermental processes like imagination certainly seem to. One view, similar to Reid's, is thatwe do have images of various sorts in our minds when we perceive, dream, hallucinate and imagine but when we actually perceive things,our sensations cannot be considered objects of perception or attention. The only objects of perception are externalobjects. Even if perception is accompanied by images, or sensations, it is wrong to say we perceive sensations.Direct realism defines perception as perception of external objects where an 'external object' is allowed to be aphoton in the eye but not an impulse in a nerve leading from the eye. Recent work in neuroscience suggests a sharedontology for perception, imagination and dreaming, with similar areas of brain being used for all of these. Morvan(2004) argues that such a shared ontology is fatal for direct realism.

Problems with the indirect theory

A problem with representationalism is that if simple data flow and information processing is assumed thensomething in the brain must be interpreting incoming data as a 'percept'. Thissomething is often described as ahomunculus, although the term homunculus is alsoused to imply an entity that creates a continual regress, and thisneed not be implied. This suggests that some phenomenon other than simple data flow and information processing isinvolved in perception. This is more of an issue now than it was for rationalist philosophers prior to Newton, such asDescartes, for whom physical processes were poorly defined. Descartes held that there is a "homunculus" in the formof the soul, belonging to a form of natural substance known as

res cogitans

that obeyed different laws from thoseobeyed by solid matter (

res extensa

). Although Descartes duality of natural substances may have echoes in modernphysics (Bose and Fermi statistics) no agreed account of 'interpretation' has been formulated. Thus

Direct realism26representationalism remains an incomplete description of perception. Aristotle realized this and simply proposed thatideas themselves (representations) must be aware - in other words that there is no further transfer of senseimpressions beyond ideas.A potential difficulty withrepresentational realism is that, if weonly have knowledge of representations of the world, how canwe know that they resemble in anysignificant way the objects to whichthey are supposed to correspond? Anycreature with a representation in itsbrain would need to interact with theobjects that are represented to identifythem with the representation. This difficulty would seem reasonably to be covered by the learning by exploration of the world that goes on throughout life. However, there may still be a concern that if the external world is only to beinferred, its 'true likeness' might be quite different from our idea of it. The representational realist would answer tothis that 'true likeness' is an intuitive concept that falls in the face of logic, since a likeness must always depend onthe way in which something is considered.A semantic difficulty may arise when considering reference in representationalism. If I say "I see the Eiffel Tower"at a time when I am indeed looking at the Eiffel Tower, to what does the term "Eiffel Tower" refer? The direct realistmight say that in the representational account we do not really see the tower but rather 'see' the representation.However, this is a distortion of the meaning of the word see which the representationalist does not imply. For therepresentationalist the statement refers to the Eiffel Tower, which implicitly is experienced in the form of arepresentation. The representationalist does not imply that when I refer to the Eiffel Tower, I am referring to mysense experience, and when you refer to the Tower, you are referring to your sense experience.Furthermore, representative realism claims that we perceive our perceptual intermediaries-we can attend to them-justas we observe our image in a mirror. However, as we can scientifically verify, this is clearly not true of thephysiological components of the perceptual process. This also brings up the problem of dualism and its relation torepresentative realism, concerning the incongruous marriage of the metaphysical and the physical.The new objection to the Homunculus Argument claims that it relies on naive view of sensation. Because the eyesrespond to light rays is no reason for supposing that the visual field requires eyes to see it. Not only are there no lightrays in the head, but visual sensation (the argument can be extrapolated to the other senses) bears no directresemblance to the light rays at the retina, nor to the character of what they are reflected from or pass through orwhat was glowing at the origin of them. The reason given is that they only bear the similarities of

co-variation

withwhat arrives at the retinas.

[16]

Just as the currents in a wire going to a loudspeaker vary proportionately with thesounds that emanate from it but have no other likeness, so too does sensation vary proportionately (and notnecessarily directly) with what causes it but bears no other resemblance to the input. This implies that the colour weexperience is actually a cortical occurrence, and that light rays and external surfaces are not themselves coloured.The proportional variations with which cortical colour changes are there in the external world, but not colour as weexperience it. Contrary to what Gilbert Ryle believed, those who argue for sensations being brain processes do nothave to hold that there is a 'picture' in the brain since this is impossible according to this theory since actual picturesin the external world are not coloured.

[17]

It is plain that Ryle unthinkingly carried over what the eyes do to thenature of sensation; A. J. Ayer at the time described Ryle's position as 'very weak'.

[18]

So there is no 'screen' in frontof cortical 'eyes', no mental objects before one. As Thomas Hobbes put it: 'How do we take notice of sense? -- bysense itself'. Moreland Perkins has characterized it thus: that sensing is not like kicking a ball, but rather 'kicking akick'.

[19]

Today there are still philosophers arguing for colour being a property of external surfaces, light sources,

Direct realism27etc.

[20]

A more fundamental criticism is implied in theories of this type. The differences at the sensory and perceptual levelsbetween agents require that some means of ensuring at least a partial correlation can be achieved that allows theupdatings involved in communication to take place. The process in an informative statement begins with the partieshypothetically assuming that they are referring to the 'same' entity or 'property', even though their selections fromtheir sensory fields cannot match; we can call this mutually imagined projection the 'logical subject' of the statement.The speaker then produces the logical predicate which effects the proposed updating of the 'referent'. If the statementgoes through, the hearer will now have a different percept and concept of the 'referent' -- perhaps even seeing it nowas two things and not one. The radical conclusion is that we are premature in conceiving as the external as alreadysorted into singular 'objects' in the first place, since we only need to behave

as if

they are already logicallysingular.

[21]

The diagram at the beginning of this entry would thus be thought of as a false picture of the actual case,since to draw 'an' object as already selected from the real is only to treat the practically needful, but strictly false,hypothesis of objects-as-logically-singular as ontologically given. The proponents of this view thus argue that thereis no need actually

to believe

in the singularity of an object since we can manage perfectly well by

mutuallyimagining

that 'it' is singular. A proponent of this theory can thus ask the direct realist feels why he or she thinks it isnecessary to move to taking the imagining of singularity for real when there is no practical difference in the outcomein action. Therefore, although there are selections from our sensory fields which for the time being we treat as if theywere objects, they are only provisional, open to corrections at any time, and, hence, far from being direct

representations

of pre-existing singularities, they retain an experimental character. Virtual constructs or no, theyremain, however, selections that are causally linked to the real and can surprise us at any time -- which removes anydanger of solipsism in this theory. This approach dovetails with the philosophy known as social constructivism.

[22]

The character of experience of a physical object can be altered in major ways by changes in the conditions of perception or of the relevant sense-organs and the resulting neurophysiological processes, without change in theexternal physical object that initiates this process and that may seem to be depicted by the experience. Converselyany process that yields the same sensory/neural results will yield the same perceptual experience, no matter what thephysical object that initiated the process may have been like. Furthermore the causal process that intervenes betweenthe external object and the perceptual experience takes time, so that the character of the experience reflects, at themost, an earlier stage of that object than the one existing at the moment:s in observations of astronomical objects theexternal object may have ceased to exist long before the experience occurs. These facts are claimed to point to theconclusion that the direct object of experience is an entity produced at the end of this causal process, distinct fromany physical object that initiates the process."

[12]

The adverbial theory

The above argument invites the conclusion of a perceptual dualism that raises the issue of how and whether theobject can be known by experience. The adverbial theory is that this dualism is a dualism of objects, perceptualexperience being a more direct experience of objects of a different sort; sense-data.

[12]

Perceptual dualism implies"both an act of awareness (or apprehension) and an object of apprehension or awareness; the idea or sense-datum.The fundamental idea of the adverbial theory is that there is no need for such objects and the problems that theybring with them (such as whether they are physical or mental or somehow neither). Instead the occurrence of amental act or mental state with its own intrinsic character is enough to account for the character of immediateexperience."

[12]

According to the adverbial theory, when, for example, I experience a silver elliptical shape (as when viewing a coinfrom an angle) I am in a certain specific state of sensing or sensory awareness or of being appeared to: I sense in acertain manner or am appeared to in a certain way, and that specific manner of sensing or of being appeared toaccounts for the content of my experience: I am in a certain distinctive sort of experiential state. There need be noobject or entity of any sort that is literally silver and elliptical in the material world or in the mind. I experience a

Direct realism28silver and elliptical shape because an object or entity that literally has that color and shape is directly before mymind. But the nature of these entities and the way in which they are related to the mind are difficult to understand.The adverbial theory has the advantage of being metaphysically simpler, avoiding issues about the nature of sense-data, but we gain no real understanding of the nature of the states in question or of how exactly they accountfor the character of immediate experience."

[12]

References

[1]Lehar, Steve. (2000). The Function of Conscious Experience: An Analogical Paradigm of Perception and Behavior (http://cns-alumni.

bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/consc1/consc1.html),

Consciousness and Cognition

.[2]Lehar, Steve. (2000). Naïve Realism in Contemporary Philosophy (http://sharp.bu.

edu/~slehar/epist/naive-philos.

html),

The Function of Conscious Experience

.[3]Lehar, Steve. Representationalism (http://sharp.

bu.

edu/~slehar/Representationalism.

html)[4]Hearing (or audition) is the ability to perceive (create ideas of)sound by detecting vibrations. The sound waves of language can not perceivedirectly. They are only heard, interpreted and understood because the the physical waves were transformed into ideas (Mental representationof sound wages) by our brains.[5]Revonsuo, Antti (2006)

Inner Presence: Consciousness as a Biological Phenomenon,

Cambridge MA: MIT Press.[6]Rommetveit, Ragnar (1974)

On Message Structure: A Framework for the Study of Language and Communication,

London: John Wiley &Sons.[7]Steiner, George (1998),

After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation,

London & New York: Oxford University Press.[8]Hardin, C. L. (1988)

Color for Philosophers,

Indianapolis IN: Hackett Pub. Co.[9]http://canonizer.

com/topic.

asp/88/14[10]http://canonizer.

com/topic.

asp/88/17[11]http://canonizer.

com/topic.

asp/88/20[12]Epistemological Problems of Perception (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.[13]Naïve Realism (http://www.rdg.

ac.uk/AcaDepts/ld/Philos/jmp/Theory of Knowledge/NaiveRealism.

htm), University of Reading.[14]Gregory, Richard. (2003). Delusions. (http://www.

perceptionweb.com/perception/perc0303/editorial.

pdf)

Perception.

32

, pp. 257-261.[15]Green, Alex. (2003). The Empirical Description of Conscious Experience (http://www.

users.

globalnet.

co.

uk/~lka/conr.

htm),

TheScience and Philosophy of Consciousness.

[16]Sellars, Roy Wood (1919), "The epistemology of evolutionary naturalism", Mind, 28:112, 407-26; se p. 414.[17]Wright, Edmond (2005),

Narrative, Perception, Language, and Faith,

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 96-102.[18]Ayer, A. J. (1957)

The Problem of Knowledge,

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.[19]Hobbes, Thomas (1839 [1655]),

Elements of Philosophy, The First Section: Concerning Body,

London: John Bohn, p. 389; Perkins,Moreland (1983),

Sensing the World,

Indianapolis IN: Hackett Pub. Co., pp. 286-7.[20]Michael Tye (2006), 'The puzzle of true blue',

Analysis,

66: 173-78; Matthen, Mohan (2009), 'Truly blue: an adverbial aspect of perceptualrepresentation',

Analysis,

69:1, 48-54.[21]Wright, Edmond (2005),

Narrative, Perception, Language, and Faith,

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 103-120.[22]Glasersfeld, Ernst von (1995),

Radical Constructivism: A Way of Knowing and Learning,

London: RoutledgeFalmer.

External links

•Online papers on representationalism (http://consc.

net/online1.

html#represent), by various authors, compiledby David Chalmers•This is a simulation (http://www.

chainsofreason.

org/this-is-a-simulation) - A short article, aimed at the generalpublic, arguing for the representative theory of perception.•Harold I. Brown, "Direct Realism, Indirect Realism, and Epistemology". Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch, Vol. 52, No. 2. (Jun., 1992), pp. 341-363.•What Do We Perceive and How Do We Perceive It? (PDF file) (http://www.

montgomerycollege.

edu/ Departments/StudentJournal/volume2/Ian.

pdf)•Neurological explanation for paranormal experiences (http://www.

iangoddard.

net/paranorm.

htm)•The Representationalism Web Site (http://cns-alumni.bu.

edu/~slehar/Representationalism.

html)•McCreery, C. (2006) "Perception and Hallucination: the Case for Continuity.

”

Oxford: Oxford Forum. Ananalysis of empirical arguments for representationalism. Online PDF (http://www.

celiagreen.

com/ charlesmccreery/perception.pdf)

Dualism29

Dualism

René Descartes's illustration of dualism. Inputs arepassed on by the sensory organs to the epiphysis in thebrain and from there to the immaterial spirit.

In philosophy of mind,

dualism

is a set of views about therelationship between mind and matter, which begins with theclaim that mental phenomena are, in some respects,non-physical.

[1]

While Aristotle shared Plato's view of multiple souls, (ψυχή

psychí

) their hierarchical arrangement corresponded to distinctivefunctions of plants, animals and people: a nutritive soul of growthand metabolism, shared by all three, a perceptive soul of pain,pleasure and desire, shared by animals and people only, and thefaculty of reason, unique to humanity. In his view, a soul is thehylomorphic form a viable organism, where each level of thehierarchy formally supervenes upon the substance of the precedinglevel. Thus, for Aristotle, all three souls perish when the livingorganism dies.

[2]

[3]

For Plato however, the soul migrates to a newbody after death and is not identified with the physical body.

[4]

Dualism is closely associated with the philosophy of RenéDescartes (1641), which holds that the mind is a nonphysicalsubstance. Descartes was the first to clearly identify the mind withconsciousness and self-awareness and to distinguish this from the brain, which was the seat of intelligence. Hence,he was the first to formulate the mind-body problem in the form in which it exists today.

[5]

Dualism is contrastedwith various kinds of monism, including phenomenalism. Substance dualism is contrasted with all forms of materialism, but property dualism may be considered a form of emergent materialism and thus would only becontrasted with non-emergent materialism.

[6]

This article discusses the various forms of dualism and the argumentswhich have been made both for and against this thesis.

Historical overview

Plato and Aristotle

In the dialogue

Phaedo

, Plato formulated his famous Theory of Forms as distinct and immaterial substances of whichthe objects and other phenomena that we perceive in the world are nothing more than mere shadows.

[4]

Plato makes it clear, in the

Phaedo

, that the Forms are the

universalia ante res

, i.e. they are ideal universals, bywhich we are able to understand the world. In his allegory of the cave Plato likens the achievement of philosophicalunderstanding to emerging into the sun from a dark cave, where only vague shadows of what lies beyond that prisonare cast dimly upon the wall. Plato's forms are non-physical and non-mental. They exist nowhere in time or space,but neither do they exist in the mind, nor in the pleroma of matter; rather, matter is said to

“

participate

”

in form(μεθεξις

methexis

). It remained unclear however, even to Aristotle, exactly what Plato intended by that.Aristotle argued at length against many aspects of Plato's forms, creating his own doctrine of hylomorphism whereinform and matter coexist. Ultimately however, Aristotle's aim was to perfect a theory of forms, rather than to reject it.Although Aristotle strongly rejected the independent existence Plato attributed to forms, his metaphysics do agreewith Plato's

a priori

considerations quite often however. For example, Aristotle's argument that changeless, eternalsubstantial form is necessarily immaterial. Because matter provides a stable substratum for a change in form, matteralways has the potential to change. Thus, if given an eternity in which to do so, it

will

, necessarily, exercise thatpotential.

Dualism30Part of Aristotle's

psychology

, the study of the soul, is his account of theability of humansto reason and the ability of animals to perceive. In both cases, perfect copies of forms are acquired, either by direct impression of environmental forms, in the case of perception, or else by virtue of contemplation, understanding and recollection.He believed the mind can literally assume any form being contemplated or experienced, and it was unique in itsability to become a blank slate, having no essential form. As thoughts of earth are not heavy, any more than thoughtsof fire are casually efficient, they provide an immaterial complement for the formless mind.

[2]

From Neoplatonism to Scholasticism

In the early Middle Ages, there was a resurgence of what is now called Neoplatonism, which is generally based onPlato's philosophy. Neoplatonism exerted a considerable influence on Christianity, as did the philosophy of Aristotlevia scholasticism.

[7]

In the scholastic tradition of Saint Thomas Aquinas, officially incorporated into Roman Catholic dogma, the soulremains the substance of a human being, as it did per Aristotle. Aquinas, however, provided for the separation of thesoul from the body, although the soul

by itself

, was understood

not

to be a person (substance). Hence, Aquinassuggested that "soul of St. Peter pray for us" would be more appropriate than "St. Peter pray for us", because allthings connected with his person, including memories, ended with his corporeal life.

[8]

The Catholic doctrine of the resurrection of the body states that at the second coming, the soulsof the departed will be reunited with their bodies as a whole person (substance) and witness to the apocalypse. The thorough consistencybetween dogma and Aristotelian physics evident here

[9]

resulted from a belief that there can be only one truth.Consistency with science and logic remained a high priority for centuries, and a university doctorate in theologygenerally included the entire science curriculum as a prerequisite. This doctrine is not universally accepted byChristians today. Many believe that one's immortal soul goes directly to Heaven upon death of the body.

[10]

Descartes and his disciples

In his

Meditations on First Philosophy

, Descartes embarked upon a quest in which he called all his previousbeliefsinto doubt, in order to find out of what he could be certain.

[5]

In so doing, he discovered that he coulddoubt whetherhe had a body (it could be thathe was dreaming of itor that it wasan illusion created by an evil demon), but he could not doubt whether he had a mind. This gave Descartes his first inkling that the mind and body were differentthings. The mind, according to Descartes, was a "thinking thing" (lat.

res cogitans

), and an immaterial substance.This "thing" was the essence of himself, that which doubts, believes, hopes, and thinks.Thedistinction between mind and body is argued in Meditation VI as follows: I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a thinking,non-extended thing, and a clear and distinct idea of body as an extended and non-thinking thing. Whatever I canconceive clearly and distinctly, God can so create. So, Descartes argues, the mind, a thinking thing, can exist apartfrom its extended body. And therefore, the mind is a substance distinct from the body, a substance whose essence isthought.

[5]

The central claim of what is often called

Cartesian dualism

, in honour of Descartes, is that the immaterial mind andthe material body, while being ontologically distinct substances, causally interact. This is an idea which continues tofeature prominently in many non-European philosophies. Mental events cause physical events, and vice-versa. Butthis leads to a substantial problem for Cartesian dualism: How can an immaterial mind cause anything in a materialbody, and vice-versa? This has often been called the "problem of interactionism."Descartes himself struggled to come up with a feasible answer to this problem. In his letter to Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine, he suggested that animal spirits interacted with the body through the pineal gland, a small gland inthe centre of the brain, between the two hemispheres.

[5]

The term "Cartesian dualism" is also often associated withthis more specific notion of causal interaction through the pineal gland. However, this explanation was notsatisfactory:

how

can an immaterial mind interact with the physical pineal gland? Because Descartes' was such adifficult theory to defend, some of his disciples, such as Arnold Geulincx and Nicholas Malebranche, proposed a

Dualism31different explanation: That all mind-body interactions required the direct intervention of God. According to thesephilosophers, the appropriate states of mind and body were only the

occasions

for such intervention, not real causes.These occasionalists maintained the strong thesis that all causation was directly dependent on God, instead of holding that all causation was natural except for that between mind and body.

[11]

Types of mind-body dualism

Ontological dualism makes dual commitments about the nature of existence as it relates to mind and matter, and canbe divided into three different types:1.

Substance dualism

asserts that mind and matter are fundamentally distinct kinds of substances.

[1]

2.

Property dualism

suggests that the ontological distinction lies in the differences between properties of mind andmatter (as in emergentism).

[1]

3.

Predicate dualism

claims the irreducibility of mental predicates to physical predicates.

[1]

Substance dualism

Substance dualism is a type of dualism most famously defended by Descartes, which states that there are twofundamental kinds of substance: mental and material.

[6]

According to his philosophy, which is specifically calledCartesian dualism,the mental does not have extension in space, and the material cannot think.Substance dualism is important historically for having given rise to much thought regarding the famous mind-body problem. Substancedualism is a philosophical position compatible with most theologies which claim that immortal souls occupy anindependent "realm" of existence distinct from that of the physical world.

[1]

David Chalmers recently developed athought experiment inspired by the movie

The Matrix

in which substance dualism could be true: Consider acomputer simulation in which the bodies of the creatures are controlled by their minds and the minds remain strictlyexternal to the simulation. The creatures can do all the science they want in the world, but they will never be able tofigure out where their minds are, for they do not exist in their observable universe. This is a case of substancedualism with respect to computer simulation. This naturally differs from a computer simulation in which the mindsare part of the simulation. In such a case, substance monism would be true.

[12]

Property dualism

Property dualism asserts that an ontological distinction lies in the differences between properties of mind and matter,and that consciousness is ontologically irreducible to neurobiology and physics. It asserts that when matter isorganized in the appropriate way (i.e., in the way that living human bodies are organized), mental properties emerge.Hence, it is a sub-branch of emergent materialism. What views properly fall under the

property dualism

rubric isitself a matter of dispute. There are different versions of property dualism, some of which claim independentcategorisation.

[13]

Non-reductive physicalism

Non-reductive physicalism is a form of Property Dualism, in which it is asserted that all mental states are causallyreducible to physical states. One argument for this has been made in the form of anomalous monism expressed byDonald Davidson, where it is argued that mental events are identical to physical events, and there can be strictlaw-governed causal relationships. Another argument for this has been expressed by John Searle, who is theadvocate of a distinctive form of physicalism he calls biological naturalism. His view is that although mental statesare ontologically irreducible to physical states, they are causally reducible (see causality). He has acknowledged that"to many people" his views and those of property dualists look a lot alike. But he thinks the comparison ismisleading.

[13]

Dualism32

Epiphenomenalism

Epiphenomenalism is a form of Property Dualism, in which it is asserted that one or more mental states do not haveany influence on physical states (both ontologically and causally irreducible). It asserts that while material causesgive rise to sensations, volitions, ideas, etc., such mental phenomena themselves cause nothing further: they arecausal dead-ends. This can be contrasted to interactionism, on the other hand, in which mental causes can producematerial effects, and vice-versa.

[14]

Predicate dualism

Predicate dualism is the view espoused by most nonreductive physicalists, such as Donald Davidson and JerryFodor, who maintain that while there is only one ontological category of substances and properties of substances(usually physical), the predicates that we use to describe mental events cannot be redescribed in terms of (or reducedto) physical predicates of natural languages.

[15]

[16]

If we characterize

predicate monism

as the view subscribed to byeliminative materialists, who maintain that such intentional predicates as believe, desire, think, feel, etc., willeventually be eliminated from both the language of science and from ordinary language because the entities to whichthey refer do not exist, then

predicate dualism

is most easily defined as the negation of this position. Predicatedualists believe that so-called "folk psychology", with all of its propositional attitude ascriptions, is an ineliminablepart of the enterprise of describing, explaining and understanding human mental states and behavior.Davidson, for example, subscribes to Anomalous Monism, according to which there can be no strict psycho-physicallaws which connect mental and physical events under their descriptions as

mental

and

physical

events. However, allmental events also have physical descriptions. It is in terms of the latter that such events can be connected in law-likerelations with other physical events. Mental predicates are irreducibly different in character (rational, holistic andnecessary) from physical predicates (contingent, atomic and causal).

[15]

Dualist views of mental causation

Four varieties of dualist causal interaction. The arrows indicate the direction of theinteractions.

Interactionism

Interactionism is the view that mentalstates, such as beliefs and desires,causally interact with physical states.This is a position which is veryappealing to common-sense intuitions,notwithstanding the fact that it is verydifficult to establish its validity or correctness by way of logical argumentation or empirical proof. It seems to appealto common-sense because we are surrounded by such everyday occurrences as a child's touching a hot stove(physical event) which causes him to feel pain (mental event) and then yell and scream (physical event) whichcauses his parents to experience a sensation of fear and protectiveness (mental event) and so on.

[6]

Parallelism

Psycho-physical parallelism is a very unusual view about the interaction between mental and physical events whichwas most prominently, and perhaps

only

truly, advocated by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. Like Malebranche andothers before him, Leibniz recognized the weaknesses of Descartes' account of causal interaction taking place in aphysical location in the brain. Malebranche decided that such a material basis of interaction between material andimmaterial was impossible and therefore formulated his doctrine of occasionalism, stating that the interactions werereally caused by the intervention of God on each individual occasion. Leibniz's idea is that God has created apre-established harmony such that it only seems

as if

physical and mental events cause, and are caused by, one

Dualism33another. In reality, mental causes only have mental effects and physical causes only have physical effects. Hence theterm

parallelism

is used to describe this view.

[14]

Occasionalism

Occasionalism is a philosophical doctrine about causation which says that created substances cannot be efficientcauses of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly by God himself. The theory states that the illusionof efficient causation between mundane events arises out of a constant conjunction that God had instituted, such thatevery instance where the cause is present will constitute an "occasion" for the effect to occur as an expression of theaforementioned power. This "occasioning" relation, however, falls short of efficient causation. In this view, it is notthe case that the first event causes God to cause the second event: rather, God first caused one and then caused theother, but chose to regulate such behaviour in accordance with general laws of nature. Some of its most prominenthistorical exponents have been Louis de la Forge, Arnold Geulincx, and Nicholas Malebranche.

[11]

Epiphenomenalism

According to epiphenomenalism, all mental events are caused by a physical event and have no physicalconsequences, and that one or more mental states do not have any influence on physical states. So, the mental eventof deciding to pick up a rock ("M") is caused by the firing of specific neurons in the brain ("P"). When the arm andhand move to pick up the rock ("E") this is not caused by the preceding mental event M, nor by M and P together,but only by P. The physical causes are in principle reducible to fundamental physics, and therefore mental causes areeliminated using this reductionist explanation. If P causes both M and E, there is no overdetermination in theexplanation for E.

[6]

The idea that even if the animal were conscious nothing would be added to the production of behavior, even inanimals of the human type, was first voiced by La Mettrie (1745), and then by Cabanis (1802), and was furtherexplicated by Hodgson (1870) and Huxley (1874).

[17]

Non-reductive physicalism

Non-reductive physicalism is the idea that while mental states are physical they are not reducible to physicalproperties, in that an ontological distinction lies in the differences between the properties of mind and matter.According to non-reductive physicalism all mental states are causally reducible to physical states where mentalproperties map to physical properties and vice-versa. A prominent form of non-reductive physicalism calledanomalous monism was first proposed by Donald Davidson in his 1970 paper

Mental events

, where it is claimed thatmental events are identical with physical events, and that the mental is anomalous, i.e. under their mentaldescriptions these mental events are not regulated by strict physical laws.

Dualism34

Arguments for dualism

Another one of Descartes' illustrations. The firedisplaces the skin, which pulls a tiny thread,which opens a pore in the ventricle (F) allowingthe "animal spirit" to flow through a hollow tube,which inflates the muscle of the leg, causing thefoot to withdraw.

Subjective argument in support of dualism

A very important argument against physicalism (and hence in favor of some sort of dualism) consists in the idea that the mental and thephysical seem to have quite different and perhaps irreconcilableproperties.Mental events have a certain

subjective

quality to them, whereasphysical seem not to. So, for example, one may ask what a burnedfinger feels like, or what the blueness of the sky looks like, or whatnice music sounds like.

[18]

Philosophers of mind call the subjective aspects of mental events

qualia

(or

raw feels

). There is something

that it's like

to feel pain, tosee a familiar shade of blue, and so on. There are

qualia

involved inthese mental events. And the claim is that qualia seem particularlydifficult to reduce to anything physical.

[1]

Thomas Nagel, himself a physicalist, first characterized the problem of qualia for physicalistic monism in his article, "What is it like to be abat?". Nagel argued that even if we knew everything there was to knowfrom a third-person, scientific perspective about a bat's sonar system, we still wouldn't know what it is like to

be

abat.Frank Jackson formulated his famous

knowledge argument

based upon similar considerations. In this thoughtexperiment, known as Mary's room, he asks us to consider a neuroscientist, Mary, who was born, and has lived all of her life, in a black and white room with a black and white television and computer monitor where she collects all thescientific data she possibly can on the nature of colours. Jackson asserts that as soon as Mary leaves the room, shewill come to have new knowledge which she did not possess before: the knowledge of the experience of colours (i.e.,what they are like). Although, by hypothesis, Mary had already known everything there is to know about coloursfrom an objective, third-person perspective, she never knew, according to Jackson, what it was like to see red,orange, or green.If Mary really learns something new, it must be knowledge of something non-physical, since she already kneweverything there is to know about the physical aspects of colour.

[19]

David Lewis' response to this argument, nowknown as the

ability

argument, is that what Mary really came to know was simply the ability to recognize andidentify color sensations to which she had previously not been exposed.

[20]

Daniel Dennett and others also providearguments against this notion, see Mary's room for details.

Special sciences argument

This argument says that, if predicate dualism is correct, then there are special sciences which are irreducible tophysics. These irreducible special sciences, which are the source of allegedly irreducible predicates, presumablydiffer from the hard sciences in that they are interest-relative. If they are interest-relative, then they must bedependent on the existence of minds which are capable of having interested perspectives. Psychology is, of course,the paragon of special sciences; therefore, it and its predicates must depend even more profoundly on the existenceof the mental.Physics, at least ideally, sets out to tell us how the world is in itself, to carve up the world at its joints and describe itto us without the interference of individual perspectives or personal interests. On the other hand, such things as the

Dualism35patterns of the weather seen in meteorology or the behavior of human beings are only of interest to human beings assuch. The point is that having a perspective on the world is a psychological state. Therefore, the special sciencespresuppose the existence of minds which can have these states. If one is to avoid ontological dualism, then the mindthat

has

a perspective must be part of the physical reality to which it

applies

its perspective. If this is the case, then inorder to perceive the physical world as psychological, the mind must have a perspective on the physical. This, inturn, presupposes the existence of mind.

[14]

The zombie argument

The zombie argument is based on a thought experiment proposed by David Chalmers. The basic idea is that one canimagine, and therefore conceive the existence of, one's body without any conscious states being associated with it.Chalmers' argument is that it seems very plausible that such a being could exist because all that is needed is that alland only the things that the physical sciences describe about a zombie must be true of it. Since none of the conceptsinvolved in these sciences make reference to consciousness or other mental phenomena, and any physical entity canbe by definition described scientifically via physics, the move from conceivability to possibility is not such a largeone.

[21]

Others such as Dennett have argued that the notion of a philosophical zombie is an incoherent,

[22]

or unlikely,

[23]

concept. In particular, nothing proves that an entity (e.g. a computer or robot) which would perfectly mimic humanbeings, and especially perfectly mimic expressions of feelings (like joy, fear, anger, ...), would not indeed experiencethem, thus having similar states of consciousness to what a real human would have. It is argued that underphysicalism, one must either believe that anyone including oneself might be a zombie, or that no one can be azombie - following from the assertion that one's own conviction about being (or not being) a zombie is a product of the physical world and is therefore no different from anyone else's.

Argument from personal identity

This argument concerns the differences between the applicability of counterfactual conditionals to physical objects,on the one hand, and to conscious, personal agents on the other.

[24]

In the case of any material object, e.g. a printer,we can formulate a series of counterfactuals in the following manner:1.This printer could have been made of straw.2.This printer could have been made of some other kind of plastics and vacuum-tube transistors.3.This printer could have been made of 95% of what it is actually made of and 5% vacuum-tube transistors, etc..Somewhere along the way from the printer's being made up exactly of the parts and materials which actuallyconstitute it to the printer's being made up of some different matter at, say, 20%, the question of whether this printeris the same printer becomes a matter of arbitrary convention.Imagine the case of a person, Frederick, who has a counterpart born from the same egg and a slightly geneticallymodified sperm. Imagine a series of counterfactual cases corresponding to the examples applied to the printer.Somewhere along the way, one is no longer sure about the identity of Frederick. In this latter case, it has beenclaimed,

overlap of constitution

cannot be applied to the identity of mind. As Madell puts it:"But while my present body can thus have its partial counterpart in some possible world, my presentconsciousness cannot. Any present state of consciousness that I can imagine either is or is not mine. There isno question of degree here."

[24]

If the counterpart of Frederick, Frederickus, is 70% constituted of the same physical substance as Frederick, doesthis mean that it is also 70% mentally identical with Frederick? Does it make sense to say that something is mentally70% Frederick?

[25]

A possible solution to this dilemma is that of open individualism.

Dualism36

Argument from reason

Philosophers and scientists such as Victor Reppert, William Hasker and Alvin Plantinga have developed anargument for dualism dubbed the "Argument from Reason" and credit C.S. Lewis

—

who called it "The CardinalDifficulty of Naturalism," the title of chapter three of the book

—

with first bringing the argument to light in his book

Miracles

.

[26]

In short the argument holds that if, as thoroughgoing naturalism entails, all of our thoughts are the effect of aphysical cause, then we have no reason for assuming that they are also the consequent of a reasonable ground.Knowledge, however, is apprehended by reasoning from ground to consequent. Therefore, if naturalism were true,there would be no way of knowing it

—

or anything else not the direct result of a physical cause

—

and we could noteven suppose it, except by a fluke.

[26]

By this logic, the statement "I have reason to believe naturalism is valid" is self-referentially incoherent in the samemanner as the sentence "One of the words of this sentence does not have the meaning that it appears to have," or thestatement "I never tell the truth."

[27]

That is, in each case to assume the veracity of the conclusion would eliminatethe possibility of valid grounds from which to reach it. To summarize the argument in the book, Lewis quotes J. B.S. Haldane who appeals to a similar line of reasoning:

[28]

If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason tosuppose that my beliefs are true ... and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.

—

J. B. S. Haldane,

Possible Worlds

, page 209In his essay

Is Theology Poetry

, Lewis himself summarises the argument in a similar fashion when he writes:If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on themeaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any moresignificance than the sound of the wind in the trees.

—

C. S. Lewis,

The Weight of Glory, page 139

Causal Interaction

If consciousness (the mind) can exist independently of physical reality (the brain), one must explain how physicalmemories are created concerning consciousness. Dualism must therefore explain how consciousness affects physicalreality.One possible explanation is that of a miracle, proposed by Arnold Geulincx and Nicholas Malebranche, where allmind-body interactions require the direct intervention of God.Although at the time C. S. Lewis wrote Miracles,

[29]

Quantum Mechanics (and physical indeterminism) was only inthe initial stages of acceptance, he stated the logical possibility that if the physical world was proved to beindeterministic this would provide an entry (interaction) point into the traditionally viewed closed system, where ascientifically described physically probable/improbable event could be philosophically described as an action of anon physical entity on physical reality.

Arguments against dualism

Causal interaction

One argument against Dualism is with regard to causal interaction. If consciousness (the mind) can existindependently of physical reality (the brain), one must explain how physical memories are created concerningconsciousness. Dualism must therefore explain how consciousness affects physical reality. One of the mainobjections to dualistic interactionism is lack of explanation of how the material and immaterial are able to interact.

Dualism37Varieties of dualism according to which an immaterial mind causally affects the material body and vice-versa havecome under strenuous attack from different quarters, especially in the 20th century. Critics of dualism have oftenasked how something totally immaterial can affect something totally material - this is the basic

problem of causalinteraction

.First, it is not clear

where

the interaction would take place. For example, burning one's fingers causes pain.Apparently there is some chain of events, leading from the burning of skin, to the stimulation of nerve endings, tosomething happening in the peripheral nerves of one's body that lead to one's brain, to something happening in aparticular part of one's brain, and finally resulting in the sensation of pain. But pain is not supposed to be spatiallylocatable. It might be responded that the pain "takes place in the brain." But, intuitively, pains are not locatedanywhere. This may not be a devastating criticism. However, there is a second problem about the interaction.Namely, the question of

how

the interaction takes place, where in dualism 'the mind' is assumed to be non physicaland by definition outside of the realm of science. The

mechanism

which explains the connection between the mentaland the physical would therefore be a philosophical proposition as compared to a scientific theory. For example,compare such a mechanism to a physical mechanism that

is

well understood. Take a very simple causal relation,such as when a cue ball strikes an eight ball and causes it to go into the pocket. What happens in this case is that thecue ball has a certain amount of momentum as its mass moves across the pool table with a certain velocity, and thenthat momentum is transferred to the eight ball, which then heads toward the pocket. Compare this to the situation inthe brain, where one wants to say that a decision causes some neurons to fire and thus causes a body to move acrossthe room. The intention to "cross the room now" is a mental event and, as such, it does not have physical propertiessuch as force. If it has no force, then it would seem that it could not possibly cause any neuron to fire. However, withDualism, an explanation is required of how something without any physical properties has physical

effects

.By assuming a deterministic physical universe, the objection can be formulated more precisely. When a persondecides to walk across a room, it is generally understood that the decision to do so, a mental event, immediatelycauses a group of neurons in that person's brain to fire, a physical event, which ultimately results in his walkingacross the room. The problem is that if there is something totally nonphysical

causing

a bunch of neurons to fire,then there is no

physical

event which causes the firing. This means that some physical energy is required to begenerated against the physical laws of the deterministic universe - this is by definition a miracle and there can be noscientific explanation of (repeatable experiment performed regarding) where the

physical

energy for the firing camefrom.

[30]

Such interactions would violate the fundamental laws of physics. In particular, if some external source of energy is responsible for the interactions, then this would violate the law of the conservation of energy.

[31]

Dualisticinteractionism has therefore been argued against in that it violates a general heuristic principle of science: the causalclosure of the physical world.

Replies

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy mentions two possible replies to this objection.

[6]

The first reply says that itmight be possible for mind to influence the

distribution

of energy, without altering its quantity. Another possibility isto deny that the human body is a closed system. Since the principle of conservation of energy applies only to closedsystems, the objection becomes irrelevant. Catholic Encyclopedia mentions the same replies.

[32]

These replies mayprotect The Law of Conservation of Energy, but they do not in themselves offer an explanation of how theinteraction takes place (- it may be assumed to be a miracle).Another reply to this objection is to assume some modification of causal relations in the physical universe - Mills hasresponded by pointing out that mental events may be causally overdetermined. Causal overdetermination means thatsome features of an effect may not be fully explained by its sufficient cause. For example, "the high pitched musiccaused the glass to break but this is the third time that that glass has broken in the last week." It is certain that thehigh-pitched music is the sufficient cause of the breaking of the glass, but it does not explain the feature of the eventthat is identified by the phrase "this is the third time this week...". That feature is causally related, in some sense, tothe two prior events of the glasses having broken in the last week. In response, it has been pointed out that we should

Dualism38probably focus on the inherent or intrinsic features of situations or events, if they exist, and apply the idea of causalclosure to just those specific features.Another reply to this objection is that there is a possibility that the interaction may involve dark energy, dark matteror some other currently undefined scientific process,

[14]

however in this case dualism is replaced with physicalism,or the interaction point is left for study at a later time when these physical processes are understood.Another reply to this objection is made with respect to the derivation of an indeterministic physical universe, whereperhaps the interaction which takes place in the human body is not at all of the classical "billiard ball" type of Newtonian mechanics. There is an important question of physical determinism versus physical indeterminism. If anon deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct then events at the microscopic level are necessarilyindeterminate, where the degree of determinism increases as a function of the scale of the system (see Quantumdecoherence). One particular example of such indeterminism is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, where the moreprecisely one can localize the position of an electron along an axis, the more imprecise becomes the ability todetermine its linear momentum along this axis and vice-versa. Philosophers such as Karl Popper and John Eccleshave theorized that such indeterminacy may apply even at the macroscopic scale.

[33]

Argument from brain damage

This argument has been formulated by Paul Churchland, among others. The point is that, in instances of some sort of brain damage (e.g. caused by automobile accidents, drug abuse, pathological diseases, etc.), it is always the case thatthe mental substance and/or properties of the person are significantly changed or compromised. If the mind were acompletely separate substance from the brain, how could it be possible that every single time the brain is injured, themind is also injured? Indeed, it is very frequently the case that one can even predict and explain the kind of mental orpsychological deterioration or change that human beings will undergo when specific parts of their brains aredamaged. So the question for the dualist to try to confront is how can all of this be explained if the mind is a separateand immaterial substance from, or if its properties are ontologically independent of, the brain.

[34]

Property dualismand William Hasker's "emergent dualism" (which is largely similar to Vitalism

[35]

) seek to avoid this problem. Theyassert that the mind is a property or substance that emerges from the appropriate arrangement of physical matter, andtherefore could be affected by any rearrangement of matter.Phineas Gage, who suffered destruction of one or both frontal lobes by a projectile iron rod, is often cited as anexample illustrating that the brain causes mind. Gage certainly exhibited some mental changes after his accident.This physical event, the destruction of part of his brain, therefore caused some kind of change in his mind,suggesting a correlation between brain states and mental states. Similar examples abound; neuroscientist DavidEagleman describes the case of another individual who exhibited escalating pedophilic tendencies at two differenttimes, and in each case was found to have tumors growing in a particular part of his brain.

[36]

[37]

Case studies aside, modern experiments have demonstrated that the relation between brain and mind is much morethan simple correlation. By damaging, or manipulating, specific areas of the brain repeatedly under controlledconditions (e.g. in monkeys) and reliably obtaining the same results in measures of mental state and abilities,neuroscientists have shown that the relation between damage to the brain and mental deterioration is likely causal.This conclusion is further supported by data from the effects of neuro-active chemicals (such as those affectingneurotransmitters)

[38]

on mental functions, but also from research on Neurostimulation (direct electrical stimulationof the brain, including Transcranial magnetic stimulation).

[39]

Dualism39

Argument from biological development

Another common argument against dualism consists in the idea that since human beings (both phylogenetically andontogenetically) begin their existence as entirely physical or material entities and since nothing outside of thedomain of the physical is added later on in the course of development, then we must necessarily end up being fullydeveloped material beings. Phylogenetically, the human species evolved, as did all other species, from a single cellmade up of matter. Since all the events that lateroccurred which ended up in the formation of our species can beexplained through the processes of random mutation and natural selection, the difficulty for the dualist is to explainwhere and why there could have intervened some non-material, non-physical event in this process of naturalevolution. Ontogenetically, we begin life as a simple fertilized ovum. There is nothing non-material or

mentalistic

involved in conception, the formation of the blastula, the gastrula, and so on. Our development can be explainedentirely in terms of the accumulation of matter through the processes of nutrition. The postulation of a non-physicalmind would seem superfluous.

Argument from brain scans' ability to discern mental states

The decisions that a person makes can, in at least some contexts, be detected up to 10 seconds earlier by means of scanning their brain activity.

[40]

Mental imagery can also be detected

[41]

Argument from simplicity

The argument from simplicity is probably the simplest and also the most common form of argument against dualismof the mental. The dualist is always faced with the question of why anyone should find it necessary to believe in theexistence of two, ontologically distinct, entities (mind and brain), when it seems possible and would make for asimpler thesis to test against scientific evidence, to explain the same events and properties in terms of one. It is aheuristic principle in science and philosophy not to assume the existence of more entities than is necessary for clearexplanation and prediction (see Occam's razor).This argument was criticized by Peter Glassen in a debate with J. J. C. Smart in the pages of

Philosophy

in the late1970s and early 1980s.

[42]

Glassen argued that, because it is not a physical entity, Occam's Razor cannot consistentlybe appealed to by a physicalist or materialist as a justification of mental states or events, such as the belief thatdualism is false. The idea is that Occam's razor may not be as 'unrestricted' as it is normally described (applying toall qualitative postulates, even abstract ones) but instead concrete (only applies to physical objects). If one appliesOccam's Razor unrestrictedly, then it recommends monism until pluralism either receives more support, or until it isdisproved. If one applies Occam's Razor only concretely, then it may not be used on abstract concepts (this route,however, has serious consequences for selecting between hypotheses

about

the abstract).

[43]

References

[1]Hart, W.D. (1996) "Dualism", in

A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind

, ed. Samuel Guttenplan, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 265-7.[2]Aristotle (c. mid 4th century BC)

On the Soul (De anima)

, ed. R.D. Hicks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907; Books II-III trans.D.W. Hamlyn, Clarendon Aristotle Series, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968.[3]Aristotle (c. mid 4th century BC)

Metaphysics (Metaphysica)

, ed. W.D. Ross, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924, 2 vols; Books IV-VI,trans. C.A. Kirwan, Clarendon Aristotle Series, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971; Books VII-VIII trans. D. Bostock, Clarendon AristotleSeries, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994; Books XIII-XIV trans. J. Annas, Clarendon Aristotle Series, Oxford: Oxford University Press,1976.[4]Plato (390s-347 BC)

Platonis Opera

, vol. 1,

Euthyphro, Apologia Socratis, Crito, Phaedo, Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophistes, Politicus

, ed. E.A.Duke, W.F. Hicken, W.S.M. Nicoll, D.B. Robinson and J.C.G. Strachan, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.[5]Descartes, R. (1641)

Meditations on First Philosophy

, in

The Philosophical Writings of René Descartes

, trans. by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, vol. 2, pp. 1-62.[6]Robinson, Howard, "Dualism",

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(Fall 2003 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.

stanford.edu/archives/fall2003/entries/dualism/.[7]Whittaker (1901)

The Neo-Platonists

, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dualism40

[8]Aquinas, Thomas (1266-71)

Summa Theologica

. trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2d, rev. ed., 22 vols., London: Burns,Oates & Washbourne, 1912-36; reprinted in 5 vols., Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981.[9]"Apostles' Creed".

Catechism of the Catholic Church

.[10]Spong, John Selby (1994)

Resurrection: Myth or Reality

, New York: HarperCollins Publishing. ISBN 0-06-067546-2.[11]Schmaltz, Tad, "Nicolas Malebranche",

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(Summer 2002 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, http:// plato.

stanford.

edu/archives/sum2002/entries/malebranche/ [12]Chalmers, David, "The Matrix as Metaphysics", http://consc.net/papers/matrix.

html, Note 6.[13]Searle, John (1983) "Why I Am Not a Property Dualist", http://ist-socrates.

berkeley.

edu/~jsearle/132/PropertydualismFNL.

doc.[14]Robinson, H. (2003) "Dualism", in

The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind

, ed. S. Stich and T. Warfield, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 85-101.[15]Donald Davidson (1980)

Essays on Actions and Events

, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-924627-0.[16]Fodor, Jerry (1968)

Psychological Explanation

, Random House. ISBN 0-07-021412-3.[17]Gallagher, S. 2006. "Where's the action? Epiphenomenalism and the problem of free will". In W. Banks, S. Pockett, and S. Gallagher.

DoesConsciousness Cause Behavior? An Investigation of the Nature of Intuition

(109-124). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.[18]Nagel, Thomas (1986)

The View From Nowhere

, New York: Oxford University Press.[19]Jackson, Frank (1977)

Perception: A Representative Theory

, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[20]Lewis, David (1988) "What Experience Teaches", in

Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology

, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1999, pp. 262-290.[21]Chalmers, David (1997).

The Conscious Mind

. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511789-1.[22]Dennett, Daniel (1995). "The unimagined preposterousness of zombies".

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Consciousness Explained

. Little, Brown and Co.. p. 95. ISBN 0316180653.[24]Madell, G. (1981)

The Identity of the Self

, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.[25]Shoemaker, S. and Swinburne, R. (1984)

Personal Identity

, Oxford: Blackwell.[26]Victor Reppert

C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea

. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8308-2732-3[27]A Response to Richard Carrier's Review of C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea (http://www.

infidels.

org/library/modern/darek_barefoot/ dangerous.

html)[28]The Cardinal Difficulty Of Naturalism (http://www.

philosophy.uncc.

edu/mleldrid/Intro/csl3.

html)[29]Lewis, C.S (1947).

Miracles

. ISBN 0688173691.[30]Baker, Gordon and Morris, Katherine J. (1996)

Descartes' Dualism

, London: Routledge.[31]Lycan, William (1996) "Philosophy of Mind" in

The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy

, ed. Nicholas Bunnin and E. P. Tsui-James,Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.[32]Maher, Michael (1909) "The Law of Conservation of Energy",

Catholic Encyclopedia

, vol. 5, pp. 422 ff, http://www.

newadvent.

org/ cathen/05422a.

htm.[33]Popper, Karl R. and Eccles, John C. (1977)

The Self and Its Brain

, Berlin: Springer.[34]Churchland, Paul (1988)

Matter and Consciousness

, Revised Edition, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.[35]Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Emergent Properties", from text: "Here, Hasker, is using the term to express a view structurally likeone (vitalism) that the British emergentists were anxious to disavow" (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/properties-emergent/)[36]"Brain tumour causes uncontrollable paedophilia" (http://www.

newscientist.

com/article/ dn2943-brain-tumour-causes-uncontrollable-paedophilia.

htmlNewScientist.

com,)[37]Eagleman, Philosophy Bites Podcast, "David Eagleman on Morality and the Brain" (http://philosophybites.

com/2011/05/ david-eagleman-on-morality-and-the-brain.

htmlDavid)[38]. PMID 11190987.[39]

Alterations of sociomoral judgement and glucose utilization in the frontomedial cortex induced by electrical stimulation of the subthalamicnucleus (STN) in Parkinsonian patients (2004):

http://www.egms.de/de/meetings/dgnc2004/04dgnc0207.

shtml[40](http://www.

nature.

com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/abs/nn.2112.html)[41](http://despolab.

berkeley.

edu/files/publications/pdf/imagerot.pdf)[42]Glassen, Peter (1976) "J. J. C. Smart, Materialism and Occam's Razor",

Philosophy

51, pp. 349-352; J. J. C. Smart (1978) "Is Occam's Razora Physical Thing?",

Philosophy

53, pp. 382-385; Peter Glassen (1983) "Smart, Materialism and Believing",

Philosophy

58, pp. 95-101.[43]Plato Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Simplicity. Excerpt:

"Perhaps scientists apply an unrestricted version of Occam's Razor to that portion of reality in which they are interested, namely the concrete, causal, spatiotemporal world. Or perhaps scientists apply a

‘

concretized

’

version of Occam's Razor unrestrictedly. Which is the case? The answer determines which general philosophical principle we end up with:ought we to avoid the multiplication of objects of whatever kind, or merely the multiplication of concrete objects? The distinction here iscrucial for a number of central philosophical debates. Unrestricted Occam's Razor favors monism over dualism, and nominalism over platonism. By contrast,

‘

concretized

’

Occam's Razor has no bearing on these debates, since the extra entities in each case are not concrete"

(http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/simplicity/)

Dualism41

Further reading

•Bracken, Patrick, and Thomas, Philip (December 21, 2002) "Time to move beyond the mind-body split" (http:// www.

bmj.

com/cgi/content/full/325/7378/1433), editorial, British Medical Journal 325, pp. 1433

–

1434. Acontroversial perspective on the use and possible overuse of the Mind-Body split and its application in medicalpractice.•Spenard, Michael (April 11, 2011) "Dueling with Dualism: the forlorn quest for the immaterial soul" (http:// www.

memeoid.

net/books/Spenard/Dueling_with_Dualism-Spenard.

pdf), essay. An historical account of mindbody duality and a comprehensive conceptual and empirical critique on the position. ISBN 978-0-578-08288-2•Amoroso, Richard L. (2010)

Complementarity of Mind and Body: Realizing the Dream of Descartes, Einstein and Eccles

, book. History making volume with first comprehensive model of dualism-interactionism, that is alsoempirically testable. ISBN 978-1-61668-203-3

External links

•Dualism (http://philosophy.

uwaterloo.

ca/MindDict/dualism.html) in the online Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind•Dualism (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/dualism/) in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

•Zombies (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/zombies/) in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

•Mind and body, Rene Descartes to William James (http://serendip.

brynmawr.

edu/Mind/Table.

html)•Online Papers on Materialism and Dualism (http://www.

u.

arizona.edu/~chalmers/online1.html#materialism)

Emergentism

In philosophy,

emergentism

is the belief in emergence, particularly as it involves consciousness and the philosophyof mind, and as it contrasts (or not) with reductionism. A property of a system is said to be emergent if it is in somesense more than the "sum" of the properties of the system's parts. An emergent property is said to be dependent onsome more basic properties (and their relationships and configuration), so that it can have no separate existence.However, a degree of independence is also asserted of emergent properties, so that they are not identical to, orreducible to, or predictable from, or deducible from their bases. The different ways in which the independencerequirement can be satisfied lead to various sub-varieties of emergence.

Varieties

All varieties of emergentism strive to be compatible with physicalism, the theory that the universe is composedexclusively of physical entities, and in particular with the evidence relating changes in the brain with changes inmental functioning. As a theory of mind (which it is not always), emergentism differs from idealism, eliminativematerialism, identity theories, neutral monism, panpsychism and substance dualism, whilst being closely associatedwith property dualism. In particular, the dependence of an emergent mind on its base means there is no metaphysicalpossibility of life after death, in contrast with substance dualism. It is generally not obvious whether an emergenttheory of mind embraces mental causation or must be considered epiphenomenal.Some varieties of emergentism are not specifically concerned with the mind-body problem, and instead suggest ahierarchical or layered view of the whole of nature, with the layers arranged in terms of increasing complexity witheach requiring its own special science. Typically physics is basic, with chemistry built on top of it, then biology,psychology and social sciences. Reductionists respond that the arrangement of the sciences is a matter of convenience, and that chemistry is derivable from physics (and so forth)

in principle

, an argument which gainedforce after the establishment of a quantum-mechanical basis for chemistry

[1]

Emergentism42Other varieties see mind or consciousness as specifically and anomalously requiring emergentist explanation, andtherefore constitute a family of positions in the philosophy of mind. Douglas Hofstadter summarises this view as

"thesoul is more than the sum of its parts"

. A number of philosophers have offered the argument that qualia constitutethe hard problem of consciousness, and resist reductive explanation in a way that all other phenomena do not. Incontrast, reductionists generally see the task of accounting for the possibly atypical properties of mind and of livingthings as a matter of showing that, contrary to appearances, such properties are indeed fully accountable in terms of the properties of the basic constituents of nature and therefore in no way genuinely atypical.Intermediate positions are possible: for instance, some emergentists hold that emergence is neither universal norrestricted to consciousness, but applies to (for instance) living creatures, or self organising systems, or complexsystems.Some philosophers hold that emergent properties causally interact with more fundamental levels, an idea known asdownward causation. Others maintain that higher-order properties simply supervene over lower levels without directcausal interaction.All the cases so far discussed have been synchronic, i.e. the emergent property exists simultaneously with its basis.Yet another variation operates diachnronically. Emergentists of this type believe that

genuinely novel properties

cancome into being, without being accountable in terms of the preceding history of the universe. (Contrast withindeterminism where it is only the

arrangement or configuration

of matter that is unaccountable). Theseevolution-inspired theories often have a theological aspect, as in the process philosophy of Alfred North Whiteheadand Charles Hartshorne.The concept of emergence has been applied to the theory of literature and art, history, linguistics, cognitive sciences,etc. by the teachings of Jean-Marie Grassin et the University of Limoges (v. esp.: J. Fontanille, B. Westphal, J.Vion-Dury, éds. L'Émergence -- Poétique de l'Émergence, en réponse aux travaux de Jean-Marie Grassin, Bern,Berlin, etc., 2011; and: the article "Emergence" in the International Dictionary of Literary Terms (DITL).

Relationship to emergentism

A refinement of vitalism may be recognized in contemporary molecular histology in the proposal that some keyorganising and structuring features of organisms, perhaps including even life itself, are examples of emergentprocesses; those in which a complexity arises, out of interacting chemical processes forming interconnected feedbackcycles, that cannot fully be described in terms of those processes since the system as a whole has properties that theconstituent reactions lack.

[2]

[3]

Whether emergent system properties should be grouped with traditional vitalist concepts is a matter of semanticcontroversy.

[4]

In a light-hearted millennial vein, Kirshner and Michison call research into integrated cell andorganismal physiology

“

molecular vitalism.

”

[5]

According to Emmeche

et al.

(1997):"On the one hand, many scientists and philosophers regard emergence as having only a pseudo-scientificstatus. On the other hand, new developments in physics, biology, psychology, and crossdisciplinaryfields such as cognitive science, artificial life, and the study of non-linear dynamical systems havefocused strongly on the high level 'collective behaviour' of complex systems, which is often said to betruly emergent, and the term is increasingly used to characterize such systems."

[6]

Emmeche

et al.

(1998) state that "there is a very important difference between the vitalists and the emergentists: thevitalist's creative forces were relevant only in organic substances, not in inorganic matter. Emergence hence iscreation of new properties regardless of the substance involved." "The assumption of an extra-physical vitalis (vitalforce, entelechy, élan vital, etc.), as formulated in most forms (old or new) of vitalism, is usually without anygenuine explanatory power. It has served altogether too often as an intellectual tranquilizer or verbalsedative

—

stifling scientific inquiry rather than encouraging it to proceed in new directions."

[7]

Emergentism43

Examples

The first emergentist theorists used the example of water having a new property when hydrogen, H, and oxygen, O,combine to form H

2

O (water). In this example there emerge such new properties as liquidity under standardconditions. (Analogous hydrides of the oxygen family, such as hydrogen sulfide, are gases). However, a better andmore recent example of an emergent phenomenon, one provided by physicist Erwin Schrödinger, is found in the caseof families of molecules known as isomers, which are made up of precisely the same atoms, differently arranged,which nevertheless have different physical properties. Similarly, enantiomers are molecules made up of precisely thesame atoms, in precisely the same arrangement, but which exist in "right-handed" and "left-handed" forms, and alsohave different properties when interacting with other molecules.Biologists Ursula Goodenough and Terrence Deacon in their 2006 essay

The Sacred Emergence of Nature

[8]

haveassembled a range of examples of physical and biological emergent properties that provide the evidential basis for

emergentism

as a philosophy that comports with a modern scientific understanding of how complexity arises in thenatural world, and as a philosophy that supports religious naturalism. A longer compilation of emergent forms innature is the 2004 book by biologist Harold Morowitz:

The Emergence of Everything

[9]

.In the game of Go, the rules stipulate various constraints on the placement and removal of playing pieces. As aconsequence of this, an "emergent" pattern is that groups of pieces with two eyes are "alive" and can never beremoved. This is a vital part of the game, without which it cannot be played or understood; but is not part of therules. Similarly, in John Conweay's Game of Life, some patterns of cells have strking properties

—

such as theability to move or reproduce

—

which are not explicitly coded into the rules.Although examples of higher level properties which are not

identical

to lower order properties are easy to find,examples where they are not

reducible to

or

predicable from

their bases are more controversial.

History

John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill outlined his version of emergentism in

System of Logic

(1843). Mill argued that the properties of some physical systems, such as those in which dynamic forces combine to produce simple motions, are subject to alaw of nature he called the "Composition of Causes". According to Mill, emergent properties are not subject to thislaw, but instead amount to more than the sums of the properties of their parts.Mill believed that various chemical reactions (poorly understood in his time) could provide examples of emergentproperties, although some critics believe that modern physical chemistry has shown that these reactions can be givensatisfactory reductionist explanations. For instance, it has been claimed that the whole of chemistry is, in principle,contained in the Schrödinger equation.

C. D. Broad

British philosopher C. D. Broad defended a realistic epistemology in

The Mind and its Place in Nature

(1925)arguing that emergent materialism is the most likely solution to the mind-body problem.Broad defined emergence as follows;-Put in abstract terms the emergent theory asserts that there are certain wholes, composed (say) of constituents A, B, and C in a relation R to each other; that all wholes composed of constituents of thesame kind as A, B, and C in relations of the same kind as R have certain characteristic properties; that A,B, and C are capable of occurring in other kinds of complex where the relation is not of the same kind asR; and that the characteristic properties of the whole R(A, B, C) cannot, even in theory, be deduced fromthe most complete knowledge of the properties of A, B, and C in isolation or in other wholes which arenot of the form R(A, B, C).

Emergentism44This definition amounted to the claim that mental properties would count as emergent if and only if philosophicalzombies were metaphysically possible. Many philosophers take this position to be inconsistent with someformulations of psychophysical supervenience.

C. Lloyd Morgan and Samuel Alexander

Samuel Alexander's views on emergentism, argued in

Space, Time, and Deity

(1920), were inspired in part by theideas in psychologist C. Lloyd Morgan's

Emergent Evolution

. Alexander believed that emergence was fundamentallyinexplicable, and that emergentism was simply a "brute empirical fact":"The higher quality emerges from the lower level of existence and has its roots therein, but it emerges therefrom, andit does not belong to that level, but constitutes its possessor a new order of existent with its special laws of behaviour. The existence of emergent qualities thus described is something to be noted, as some would say, underthe compulsion of brute empirical fact, or, as I should prefer to say in less harsh terms, to be accepted with the

“

natural piety

”

of the investigator. It admits no explanation." (Space, Time, and Deity)Despite the causal and explanatory gap between the phenomena on different levels, Alexander held that emergentqualities were

not

epiphenomenal. His view can perhaps best be described as a form of nonreductive physicalism(NRP)

[10]

or supervenience theory.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy

Ludwig von Bertalanffy founded General System Theory (GST), which is a more contemporary approach toemergentism. A popularization of many of the elements of GST may be found in

The Web of Life

by Fritjof Capra.

Jaegwon Kim

Figure demonstration how M1 and M2 are notreduced to P1 and P2.

Addressing emergentism (under the guise of non-reductivephysicalism) as a solution mind-body problem Jaegwon Kim has raisedan objection based on causal closure and overdetermination.Emergentism strives to be compatible with physicalism, andphysicalism, according to Kim, has a principle of causal closureaccording to which every physical event is fully accountable in termsof physical causes. This seems to leave no "room" for mental causationto operate. If our bodily movements were caused by the preceding stateof our bodies

and

our decisions and intentions, they would beoverdetermined. Mental causation in this sense is not the same as freewill, but is only the claim that mental states are causally relevant. If emergentists respond by abandoning the idea of mental causation, theirposition becomes a form of epiphenomenalism.In detail: he proposes (using the chart on the right) that

M1

causes

M2

(these are mental events) and

P1

causes

P2

(these are physical events).

P1

realises

M1

and

P2

realises

M2

. However

M1

does not causally effect

P1

(i.e.,

M1

is aconsequent event of

P1

). If

P1

causes

P2

, and

M1

is a result of

P1

, then

M2

is a result of

P2

. He says that the onlyalternatives to this problem is to accept dualism (where the mental events are independent of the physical events) oreliminativism (where the mental events do not exist).

Emergentism45

Notes

[1]Crane, T.

The Significance of Emergence

[2]Schultz, SG (1998). "A century of (epithelial) transport physiology: from vitalism to molecular cloning".

The American journal of physiology

274

(1 Pt 1): C13

–

23. PMID 9458708.[3]Gilbert, SF; Sarkar, S (2000). "Embracing complexity: organicism for the 21st century".

Developmental Dynamics

219

(1): 1

–

9.doi:10.1002/1097-0177(2000)9999:9999<::AID-DVDY1036>3.0.CO;2-A. PMID 10974666.[4]see "Emergent Properties" in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

. online at Stanford University (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/ properties-emergent/) for explicit discussion; briefly, some philosophers see emergentism as midway between traditional spiritual vitalismand mechanistic reductionism; others argue that, structurally, emergentism is equivalent to vitalism. See also Emmeche C (2001) Does a robothave an Umwelt?

Semiotica

134: 653-693 (http://www.nbi.dk/~emmeche/cePubl/2001d.

robumwelt.

pdf)[5]Kirschner, M; Gerhart, J; Mitchison, T (2000). "Molecular "vitalism".

Cell

100

(1): 79

–

88. doi:10.1016/S0092-8674(00)81685-2.PMID 10647933.[6]Emmeche C (1997) EXPLAINING EMERGENCE:towards an ontology of levels. Journal for General Philosophy of Science available online(http://www.

nbi.

dk/~emmeche/coPubl/97e.

EKS/emerg.html)[7]Dictionary of the History of Ideas (http://etext.lib.

virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhicontrib2.

cgi?id=dv3-69)[8]http://www.

edtechpost.

ca/readings/Ursula%20Goodenough-%20The%20Sacred%20Emergence%20of%20Nature.

pdf [9]http://books.

google.

com/books?id=CbCHoV3Un4YC&dq=the+emergence+of+Everything+Morowitz&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=Ld79SaXnNpKgM5mx0bkE&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4[10]

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(http://www.

seop.

leeds.

ac.

uk/archives/win2008/entries/properties-emergent/#SamAle)

Further reading

•Laughlin, Robert B. A Different Universe. 2005.

External links

•Emergentism (http://plato.stanford.

edu/entries/properties-emergent/) in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007.•Emergentism (http://philosophy.uwaterloo.ca/MindDict/emergence.html) in the Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind, 2007.

Enactivism46

Enactivism

is a theoretical approach to understanding the mind proposed by Gregory Bateson, Humberto Maturana,Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch.

[1]

It emphasizes the way that organisms and the human mindorganize themselves by interacting with their environment. It is closely related to situated cognition and embodiedcognition, and is presented as an alternative to cognitivism, computationalism and Cartesian dualism.

Accounts of enactivism

A book reviewer, Jeremy Trevalyan Burman, in reviewing

Consciousness & Emotion

, vol 1., by Ralph D. Ellis &Natika Newton, eds concluded:

[2]

“

...the importance of this first book was not immediately clear: future volumes will need to telegraph their implications more explicitly if theyare to be successfully received.

”

However, in a review of the book

Consciousness & Emotion Book Series 2

edited by Richard Menary, EvanThompson, the book reviewer, stated the view:

“

Enactivists criticize representational views of the mind and emphasize the importance of embodiment and action to cognition.

”

-Evan Thompson, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Toronto.

[3]

At a fundamental level, enactivism is anti-dualist. There is no "core" self, but there is rather an enchained set of context-dependent associations that collectively provide a point-of-view in approaching the momentary problems of being. In this sense, individuals can be seen to "grow into"

[2]

the world. It is not, a priori, represented, stated theauthors of

The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience

."

[4]

In

The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding

, Francisco Varela claims to have"proposed using the term

enactive

to designate this view of knowledge, to evoke the view that what is known isbrought forth, in contraposition to the more classical views of either cognitivism or connectionism." [Tree of Knowledge pg. 255] Within the book, the analogies of the Razor's Edge and the Scylla and Charybdis are used todescribe the "epistemologic Odyssey" between the notions of solipsism and representationalism.

Enactivism

,therefore is themiddle ground between the two extremes [Tree of Knowledge, pgs. 133,134,253]. Maturana and Varela use thisterm to "conf ront the problem of understanding how our existence-the praxis of our living- is coupledto a surrounding world which appears filled with regularities that are at every instant the result of our biological andsocial histories.... to find a

via media

: to understand the regularity of the world we are experiencing at every moment,but without any point of reference independent of ourselves that would give certainty to our descriptions andcognitive assertions. Indeed the whole mechanism of generating ourselves, as describers and observers tells us thatour world, as the world which we bring forth in our coexistence with others, will always have precisely that mixtureof regularity and mutability, that combination of solidity and shifting sand, so typical of human experience when welook at it up close."[Tree of Knowledge, pg. 241]

Similar Theories of Growth of Knowledge

Another current of biology inspired theories of growth of knowledge which are even more tied to UniversalDarwinism in comparison to enactivism are those of evolutionary epistemologists, such as Karl Popper and DonaldT. Campbell.

[5]

In common with enactivism is their emphasis on both action and embodiment as sources of theknowledge which must reflect the environment well enough for the organism to be able to survive in it and whichmake them competitive enough to be able to reproduce at sustainable rate in their environment.

Enactivism47

Scholars with sympathetic ideas

•Andy Clark•Fernando Flores•Rafael E. Núñez•Rodney Brooks•James J. Gibson•Jean Piaget•Jerome Bruner•Edwin Hutchins•Richard Rorty•Hubert Dreyfus•Mark Johnson•Ron Sun•Walter Freeman•Joe L. Kincheloe•Evan Thompson•Riccardo Manzotti[6]•George Lakoff•Francisco Varela•Teed Rockwell[7]•Humberto Maturana•Terry Winograd•Alva Noë

Other related scholars

•Gregory Bateson•Stuart Kauffman•Maurice Merleau-Ponty•Marvin Minsky•Lev Vygotsky•Ludwig Wittgenstein

Yet other authors of similar "Natural Growth of Knowledge" theories

•Karl Popper•Donald T. Campbell

Further reading

•McGann, M. & Torrance, S. (2005). Doing it and meaning it (and the relationship between the two). In R. D. Ellis& N. Newton,

Consciousness & Emotion, vol. 1: Agency, conscious choice, and selective perception

. Amsterdam:John Benjamins. ISBN 1-58811-596-8•Hutto, D. D. (Ed.) (in press).

Radical Enactivism: Intentionality, phenomenology, and narrative.

In R. D. Ellis &N. Newton (Series Eds.),

Consciousness & Emotion, vol. 2.

ISBN 90-272-4151-1

References

[1]The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience[2]Burman, J. T. (2006). [Review of the book Consciousness & Emotion, vol. 1: Agency, conscious choice, and selective perception.],

Journalof Consciousness Studies, 13

(12), pp. 115-119. Full-text (http://www.imprint.co.

uk/pdf/13_12_br.

pdf)[3]Radical Enactivism (http://www.

benjamins.

com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.

cgi?bookid=C&EB 2)[4]Varela, F., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991).

The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience.

Cambridge MA: MIT Press.[5]Gary Cziko (1995) Without Miracles: Universal Selection Theory and the Second Darwinian Revolution (http://faculty.

ed.

uiuc.

edu/ g-cziko/wm/) (MIT Press)[6]http://www.

consciousness.

it[7]http://www.

sonoma.

edu/philosophy/faculty/teed_rockwell.html

Endurantism48

Endurantism

or endurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity. According to the endurantistview material objects are persisting three-dimensional individuals wholly present at every moment of their existence.This conception of an individual as always present, is opposed to perdurantism or four dimensionalism whichmaintains that an object is a series of temporal parts or stages. Some philosophers argue that perdurantism betteraccommodates the theory of special relativity. The use of "endure" and "perdure" to distinguish two ways in whichan object can be thought to persist can be traced to David Lewis.

References

•Temporal parts

[1]

entry in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

•Lewis, D.K.. 1986.

On the Plurality of Worlds

Oxford: Blackwell•McKinnon, N. 2002. "The Endurance/Perdurance Distinction",

The Australasian Journal of Philosophy

80:3 p.288-306.•Merricks, T. 1999. "Persistence, Parts and Presentism",

Noûs

33 p. 421-38.•Sider, T. 2001.

Four-Dimensionalism

Oxford: Clarendon Press.•Zimmerman, D. 1996. "Persistence and Presentism",

Philosophical Papers

25:2.

References

[1]http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/temporal-parts

Epiphenomenalism

In philosophy of mind,

epiphenomenalism

, also known as

Type-E Dualism

, is a view that "mental" states do nothave any influence on "physical" states.

Background

The history of epiphenomenalism goes back to the post-Cartesian attempt to solve the riddle of Cartesian dualism, i.e., of how mind and body could interact. La Mettrie, Leibniz and Spinoza all in their own way began this way of thinking. The idea that even if the animal were conscious nothing would be added to the production of behavior,even in animals of the human type, was first voiced by La Mettrie (1745), and then by Cabanis (1802), and was further explicated by Hodgson (1870) and Huxley (1874).

[1]

Huxley (1874) likened mental phenomena to the whistleon a steam locomotive. However, epiphenomenalism flourished primarily as it found a niche among methodologicalor scientific behaviorism. In the early 1900s scientific behaviorists such as Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B. F.Skinner began the attempt to uncover laws describing the relationship between stimuli and responses, withoutreference to inner mental phenomena. Instead of adopting a form of eliminativism or mental fictionalism, positionsthat deny that inner mental phenomena exist, a behaviorist was able to adopt epiphenomenalism in order to allow forthe existence of mind. However, by the 1960s, scientific behaviourism met substantial difficulties and eventuallygave way to the cognitive revolution. Participants in that revolution, such as Jerry Fodor, reject epiphenomenalismand insist upon the efficacy of the mind. Fodor even speaks of "epiphobia"

—

fear that one is becoming anepiphenomenalist.However, since the cognitive revolution, there have been several who have argued for a version of epiphenomenalism. These more recent versions, however, maintain that only the subjective, qualitative aspects of mental states are epiphenomenal. Imagine both Pierre and a robot eating a cupcake. Unlike the robot, Pierre is

Epiphenomenalism49conscious of eating the cupcake while the behavior is under way. This subjective experience is often called a

quale

(plural qualia), and it describes the private "raw feel" or the subjective "what-it-is-like" that is the inneraccompaniment of many mental states. Thus, while Pierre and the robot are both doing the same thing, only Pierrehas the inner conscious experience.Frank Jackson (1982), for example, once espoused the following view:I am what is sometimes known as a "qualia freak". I think that there are certain features of bodily sensationsespecially, but also of certain perceptual experiences, which no amount of purely physical informationincludes. Tell me everything physical there is to tell about what is going on in a living brain... you won't havetold me about the hurtfulness of pains, the itchiness of itches, pangs of jealousy....

[2]

According to epiphenomenalism, mental states like Pierre's pleasurable experience

—

or, at any rate, their distinctivequalia

—

are just epiphenomena; they are side-effects or by-products of physical processes in the body. Pierre,according to epiphenomenalism, might as well be a robot or a zombie , because conscious mental states do not affecthis behavior. If Pierre takes a second bite, it is not caused by his pleasure from the first; If Pierre says, "That wasgood, so I will take another bite", his speech act is not caused by the preceding pleasure. The conscious experiencesthat accompany brain processes are causally impotent.Some thinkers draw distinctions between different varieties of epiphenomenalism. In

Consciousness Explained

,Daniel Dennett' distinguishes between a purely metaphysical sense of epiphenomenalism, in which theepiphenomenon has no causal impact at all, and Huxley's "steam whistle" epiphenomenalism, in which effects existbut are not functionally relevant.

Arguments for

A large body of neurophysiological data seems to support epiphenomenalism. Some of the oldest such data is theBereitschaftspotential or "readiness potential" in which electrical activity related to voluntary actions can be recordedup to two seconds before the subject is awareof making adecision toperform the action. More recently Benjamin Libet et al. (1979) haveshown that it can take 0.5 seconds before a stimulus becomes part of conscious experience even though subjects can respond to the stimulus in reaction time tests within 200 milliseconds. Recent research onthe Event Related Potential also shows that conscious experience does not occur until the late phase of the potential(P3 or later) that occurs 300 milliseconds or more after the event. In Bregman's Auditory Continuity Illusion, wherea pure tone is followed by broadband noise and the noise is followed by the same pure tone it seems as if the toneoccurs throughout the period of noise. This also suggests a delay for processing data before conscious experienceoccurs. Norretranders has called the delay "The User Illusion" implying that we only have the illusion of consciouscontrol, most actions being controlled automatically by non-conscious parts of the brain with the conscious mindrelegated to the role of spectator.The scientific data seem to support the idea that conscious experience is created by non-conscious processes in thebrain (i.e., there is subliminal processing that becomes conscious experience). These results have been interpreted tosuggest that people are capable of action before conscious experience of the decision to act occurs. Some argue thatthis supports epiphenomenalism, since it shows that the feeling of making a decision to act is actually anepiphenomenon; the action happens before the decision, so the decision did not cause the action to occur.

Some critical responses

The philosophical behaviorists (as opposed to scientific behaviourists) reject epiphenomenalism on the grounds thatit is, in eliminative materialist Gilbert Ryle's phrase, a "category mistake". Just as there is no Cartesian "ghost in themachine", there are no ghostly events that accompany behavior in an inner theater. Consciousness belongs not to thecategory of objects of reference, but rather to the category of ways of doing things. To be attentive is to do thingswith focus and care, not for something to be happening in the ghostly theater that Ryle lampooned as a dualist

Epiphenomenalism50dogma.Functionalists chart a different course, accepting that there is a system of mental events mediating stimulus andresponse, but asserting that this system is "topic neutral" and capable of being realized in various ways. The topicneutrality of the mind implies the denial of epiphenomenalism, which, as a kind of property dualism, fixesconsciousness as a non-neutral, non-physical topic.Eliminative materialists, on the other hand, assert that the concept of mind aims to fix reference to a non-physicaltopic; so they disagree with the philosophical behaviorist analysis, as well as the functionalist analysis. Eliminativematerialism holds, however, that this dualistic aim of "folk psychology" is a fatal error built into mental concepts. Soit would be better to eliminate the concept of mind, and concepts implicated in it such as

desire

and

belief,

in favorof an emerging neurocomputational account. (A more moderate eliminativist position would maintain what J. L.Mackie called an

error theory

, stripping false beliefs away from the problematic concepts but not eliminating them,leaving intact a legitimate core of meaning.)

Arguments against

Benjamin Libet's results are quoted

[3]

in favor of epiphenomenalism, but he believes subjects still have a "consciousveto", since the readiness potential does not invariably lead to an action. In

Freedom Evolves

, materialistic softdeterminist Daniel Dennett argues that the no-free-will conclusion is based on dubious assumptions about thelocation of consciousness. Libet, says Dennett, tells when the readiness potential occurs objectively, usingelectrodes, but relies on the subject reporting the position of the hand of a clock to determine when the consciousdecision was made. As Dennett points out, this is only a report of where it

seems

to the subject that various thingscome together, not of the objective time at which they actually occur.Many argue that data such as the Bereitschaftspotential undermine, rather than support, epiphenomenalism. Suchexperiments rely on the subject reporting the point in time when conscious experience apparently occurs, whichrelies on the subject being able to consciously perform an action, and on conscious experience being effectiveenough to prompt a response. Such a premise contradicts epiphenomenalism, which claims that conscious experiencehas no effects and therefore cannot be measured. Hence, so the argument goes, any experiment that detects whetheror when conscious experience occurs argues strongly against, not for, epiphenomenalism.

[4]

Alternatively, a propertydualist in acceptance of physical mental states might respond to this by arguing that the subjective consciousexperience or qualia believed to be mapped to the measured or objective conscious experience does not prompt aresponse and has no effects.Another criticism of epiphenomenalism is that the presence of the theory of epiphenomenalism seems to contradictthe very idea. Most would agree that

thinking

is a mental process, but, if epiphenomenalism is true, how couldsomeone ever express the idea of epiphenomenalism? It would be impossible, because this "expressing" wouldrequire the banned connection between mind and behavior. If epiphenomenalism is true and thinking is a mentalprocess, then its truth is ineffable. So in the example above, Pierre cannot

convey

his pleasure. Alternatively, aproperty dualist in acceptance of physical mental states might respond to this by arguing that mental processes suchas thinking are both physical (objective) and non physical (in this case subjective).Green (2003) has argued that epiphenomenalism does not even provide a satisfactory

‘

out

’

from the problem of interaction posed by substance dualism. According to Green, epiphenomenalism implies a one-way form of interactionism that is just as hard to conceive of as the two-way form embodied in substance dualism. If it is aproblem how mental events can influence physical events, how is it any less of a problem how physical events caninfluence mental ones? Green suggests that the assumption that it is less of a problem may arise from theunexamined belief that physical events have some sort of primacy over mental ones. Alternatively, a property dualistin acceptance of physical mental states might respond to this by arguing that the initial problem of how non physicalevents can influence physical ones was a product of an inference of physical determinism, and not a problem of metaphysical conception.

Epiphenomenalism51

Notes

[1]Gallagher, S. 2006. "Where's the action?: Epiphenomenalism and the problem of free will". In W. Banks, S. Pockett, and S. Gallagher.

DoesConsciousness Cause Behavior? An Investigation of the Nature of Intuition

(109-124). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.[2]Jackson, 1982, p. 127.[3]Wegner D., 2002. The Illusion of Conscious Will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.[4]Flanagan, O.

Consciousness Reconsidered

, MIT press, 1994

References and further reading

•Chalmers, David. (1996)

The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory

, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.•Dennett, Daniel. (2003)

Freedom evolves

.•Green, Celia. (2003)

The Lost Cause: Causation and the Mind-Body Problem

, Oxford: Oxford Forum.•Huxley, Thomas. (1874) "On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History",

The Fortnightly Review

, n.s. 16, pp. 555

–

580. Reprinted in Method and Results: Essays by Thomas H. Huxley (New York: D.Appleton and Company, 1898).•Jackson, Frank. (1982) "Epiphenomenal Qualia",

The Philosophical Quarterly

, 32, pp. 127

–

136. Online text(http://members.

aol.

com/NeoNoetics/Mary.

html)•James, William. (1890)

The Principles of Psychology

, Henry Holt And Company. Online text (http:// psychclassics.

yorku.

ca/James/Principles/index.htm)•Libet, Benjamin, E. W. Wright, B. Feinstein, and D. K. Pearl, "Subjective Referral of the Timing for a ConsciousSensory Experience",

Brain

, 194, pp. 191

–

221.•Libet, Benjamin. (1985) "Unconscious Cerebral Initiative and the Role of Conscious Will in Voluntary Action",

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

, 8, pp. 529

–

566.•Robinson, William. (2003) "Epiphenomenalism",

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

, Edward Zalta (ed.).Online text (http://plato.

stanford.edu/archives/spr2003/entries/epiphenomenalism/)•Walter, Sven. (2007) "Epiphenomenalism,"

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

, James Fieser and BradleyDowden (eds.). Online text (http://www.iep.

utm.edu/e/epipheno.htm)

External links

•Epiphenomenalism (http://plato.

stanford.edu/entries/epiphenomenalism) entry in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

by William Robinson.•Epiphenomenalism (http://www.

iep.

utm.

edu/e/epipheno.htm) - an article by Sven Walter in

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

.•Wikibook on consciousness•Exit Epiphenomenalism (http://www.

emergentmind.

org/rivas-vandongen.

htm) - Analysis by Rivas and VanDongen.•Strange Ideas (http://www.

consciousentities.

com/deadends.

htm#epiphenomenalism)

Externalism52

Externalism

is a group of positions in the philosophy of mind which hold that the mind is not only the result of whatis going on inside the nervous system (or the brain) but also of what either occur or exist outside the subject. It isoften contrasted with internalism which holds that the mind emerges out of neural activity alone. Externalismarticulates the belief that the mind is not just the brain or what the brain does.There are different versionsof externalism based both on the strength of the relation, and on what the mind is takento be. William Lycan wrote,

“

Since Twin Earth was discovered by American philosophical-space explorers in the1970s

”

[1]

externalism subdivided into several variants described by Mark Rowlands.

[2]

Externalism stresses theimportance of factors external to the nervous system. At one extreme, the mind could possibly depend on externalfactors. At the opposite extreme, the mind depends necessarily on external factors. The most extreme form of externalism maintains that the mind is either constituted or identical with physical processes partially or totallyexternal to the nervous system.Another important criterion is which aspect of the mind is addressed. Some externalists focus on purely cognitiveaspects of the mind (Andy Clark and David Chalmers,

[3]

Shaun Gallagher,

[4]

and many others

[5]

), while some tackleeither the phenomenal aspect of the mind or the conscious mind itself. A few consider only the phenomenal content,such as William Lycan,

[6]

Alex Byrne

[7]

or Francois Tonneau,

[8]

and others also argue the role of the mind as avehicle of mental phenomenal activity, such as Teed Rockwell,

[9]

or Riccardo Manzotti.

[10]

One last important differentiating factor is whether what is external to the mind is the content or the vehicle of themind.

Proto-externalists

To this group belong many authors who weren

’

t dubbed as externalist but whose work suggested views not too farfrom current forms of externalism.The first group of protexternalists to consider is the group of neorealists active at the beginning of 1900.

[11]

Inparticular, Edwin Holt suggested a view of perception that considered the external world as constitutive of mentalcontent. His rejection of representation paved the way to consider the external object as being somehow directlyperceived:

“

Nothing can represent a thing but that thing itself

”

(

[12]

) Holt

’

s words anticipated by almost a century thefamous anti-representationalist slogan by Rodney Brooks "The world is its best representation".

[13]

Recently,neorealist views were refreshed by Francois Tonneau who wrote that

“

According to neorealism, consciousness ismerely a part, or cross-section, of the environment. Neorealism implies that all conscious experiences, veridical orotherwise

”

(Tonneau 2004, p. 97)

[8]

Another author to be taken into account is Alfred North Whitehead, whose process ontology is a form of externalismsince it endorses a neutral ontology, whose basic elements (prehension, actual occasions, events, and processes)seamlessly proceeded from microscopic activity up to the highest level of psychological and emotional life.Although the main Whitehead text is rather difficult

[14]

, recently David Ray Griffin wrote an interesting update onWhitehead's thought .

[15]

Also, John Dewey expressed a conception of the mind and its role in the world which is very sympathetic withexternalism (Dewey 1925).More recently, James J. Gibson defended an ecological view of perception and thus of many aspects of the mind

[16]

. He re-formulated several notions of various cognitive processes which are customarily internal to the brain. Twoclear examples are optical flow and information. For Gibson the optical flow is not the computation of the spatialderivatives of the images acquired but the retina as in the classic computational view of the mind championed byDavid Marr

[17]

and many others,

[18]

rather the optical flow is an environmental dynamic manifold into which theagent is moving. In Gibson's system, information gets a twist, too, and it is relocated at an ecological level. Gibson

Externalism53introduced the notion of affordance which is external to the agent as such being the potential causal engagementbetween the body of the agent and some other object.Gregory Bateson also outlined an ecological view of the mind.

[19]

Because of his background in cybernetics, he wasfamiliar with the notion of feedback that somehow hampers the traditions separation between the inside and theoutside of a system. He questioned the traditional boundary of the mind and tried to express an ecological view of it,attempting to show that the chasm between mind and nature is much less obvious than it seems.

[20]

Semantic externalism

Semantic externalism is the first form of externalism which was dubbed so. As the name suggests it focuses onmental content of semantic nature.Semantic externalism suggests that the mental content does not supervene on what is in the head. Yet the physicalbasis and mechanisms of the mind remain inside the head. This is a relatively safe move since it does not jeopardizeour beliefs of being located inside our cranium. Hilary Putnam focused particularly on intentionality between ourthoughts and external state of affairs

–

whether concepts or objects. To defend his position, Putnam developed thefamous Twin Earth thought experiment. Putnam expressed his view with the slogan "'meanings' just ain't in the

head

."

[21]

In contrast, Tyler Burge emphasized the social nature of the external world suggesting that semantic content isexternally constituted by means of social, cultural, and linguistic interactions.

[22]

Phenomenal externalism

Phenomenal externalism extends the externalist gist to phenomenal content. Fred Dretske (Dretske 1996) suggestedthat

“

The experiences themselves are in the head (why else would closing one's eyes or stopping one's earsextinguish them?), but nothing in the head (indeed, at the time one is having the experiences, nothing outside thehead) need have the qualities that distinguish these experiences.

”

(Dretske 1996, p. 144-145).

[23]

So, althoughexperiences remain in the head, their phenomenal content could depend on something elsewhere.In similar way, William Lycan defended an externalist and representationalist view of phenomenal experience. Inparticular, he objected to the tenet that qualia are narrow.

[1]

It has been often held that some, if not all, of mental states must have a broad content, that is an external content totheir vehicles. For instance, Frank Jackson and Philippe Pettit stated that

“

The contents of certain intentional statesare broad or context-bound. The contents of some beliefs depend on how things are outside the subject

”

(Jackson andPettit 1988, p. 381)

[24]

However, neither Dretske nor Lycan go far as to claim that the phenomenal mind extends literally and physicallybeyond the skin. In sum they suggest that phenomenal contents could depend on phenomena external to the body,while their vehicles remains inside.

The extended mind

The extended mind model suggests that cognition is larger than the body of the subject. According to such a model,the boundaries of cognitive processes are not always inside the skin.

“

Minds are composed of tools for thinking

”

(Dennett 2000

[25]

, p. 21). According to Andy Clark,

“

cognition leaks out into body and world

”

. The mind then is nolonger inside the skull, but it is extended to comprehend whatever tools are useful (ranging from notepad and pencilsup to smartphones and usb memories). This is in a nutshell the model of the extended mind.

[26]

. When someoneuses pencil and paper to compute large sums, cognitive processes extend to the pencil and paper themselves. In aloose sense, nobody would deny it. In a stronger sense, it is rather controversial whether the boundaries of thecognitive mind would extend to the pencil and paper. For most of the proponents of the extended mind, the

Externalism54phenomenal mind remains inside the brain. While commenting on Andy Clark

’

s last book

Supersizing the Mind

[27]

,David Chalmers asks

“

what about the big question: extended consciousness? The dispositional beliefs, cognitiveprocesses, perceptual mechanisms, and moods [

…

] extend beyond the borders of consciousness, and it is plausiblethat it is precisely the nonconscious part of them that is extended.

”

(Chalmers 2009

[28]

, p. xiv)

Enactivism and embodied cognition

Enactivism and embodied cognition stress the tight coupling between the cognitive processes, the body, and theenvironment

[29]

. Enactivism builds upon the work of other scholar which could be considered as cases of protoexternalist such as GregoryBateson, James J. Gibson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eleanor Rosch and many others. Itsuggests that the mind is either dependent on or identical with the interactions between the world and the agents. Forinstance, Kevin O

’

Regan andAlva Noe in a seminal paper suggested that the mind is constituted by thesensory-motor contingency between the agent and the world. A sensory motor contingency is an occasion to act in acertain way and it results from the matching between environmental and bodily properties. To a certain extent asensory-motor contingencies strongly resembles Gibson

’

s affordances. Eventually, Noe developed a more epistemicversion of enactivism where the content is the knowledge the agent has as to what it can do in a certain situation. Inany case he is an externalist when he claims that

“

What perception is, however, is not a process in the brain, but akind of skilful activity on the part of the animal as a whole. The enactive view challenges neuroscience to devise newways of understanding the neural basis of perception and consciousness

”

(Noë 2004

[30]

, p. 2). Recently Noepublished a more popular and shorter version of his position .

[31]

Enactivism receives support from various other correlated views such as embodied cognition or situated cognition.These views are usually the result of the rejection of the classic computational view of the mind which is centered onthe notion of internal representations. Enactivism receives its share of negative comments particularly fromneuroscientists like Christoph Koch (Koch 2004

[32]

, p. 9):

“

While proponents of the enactive point of view rightlyemphasize that perception usually takes place within the context of action, I have little patience for their neglect of the neural basis of perception. If there is one thing that scientists are reasonably sure of, it is that brain activity isboth necessary and sufficient for biological sentience.

”

To recap, enactivism is a case of externalism, sometimesrestricted to cognitive or semantic aspects, some other times striving to encompass phenomenal aspects. Somethingthat no enactivist has so far claimed is that all phenomenal content is the result of the interaction with theenvironment.

Recent forms of phenomenal externalism

There are versions of externalism who suggest explicitly that also phenomenal content as well as the mental processare partially external to the body of the subject. The authors considering these views wonder whether not onlycognition but also the conscious mind could be extended in the environment. While enactivism, at the end of the day,accepts they standard physicalist ontology that conceives the world as made of interacting objects, these more radicalexternalists consider the possibility that there is some fundamental flaw in our way to conceive reality and that someontological revision is indeed unavoidable.Teed Rockwell recently published a wholehearted attack against all forms of dualism and internalism and proposedthat the mind emerges not entirely from brain activity but from an interacting nexus of brain, body, and world.

[9]

Heaccused neuroscience of endorsing a form of

Cartesian materialism

–

an indictment issued also by many others.

[33]

Dwelling on John Dewey

’

s heritage, he argues that the brain and the body bring into existence the mind as a

behavioral field

in the environment.Ted Honderich is perhaps the one with the longest experience in the field. He defends a position he himself dubbed

radical externalism

perhaps because of its ontological consequences.

[34]

One of his main examples is that "what itactually is for you to be aware of the room you are in, it is for the room a way to exist."

[35]

According to him,perceptual consciousness is a way for the world to exist

“

Phenomenologically, what it is for you to be perceptually

Externalism55conscious is for a world somehow to exist

”

.

[34]

As a result he identifies consciousness with existence.A rather radical form of phenomenal externalism is the view called the

spread mind

by Riccardo Manzotti.

[10]

Hesuggests questioning the separation between subject and object. Such a separation between the world and experiencecan be set aside because what we consider objects and their phenomenal representations are only two incompleteperspectives and descriptions of the same physical process.

[36]

This could be done, he argues, adopting a processontology that endorses a mind spread physically and spatio-temporally beyond the skin. Objects are no longerautonomous as we know them, but rather actual processes framing our reality.

[37]

References

[1]Lycan, W. G., (2001), "The Case for Phenomenal Externalism" in J. E. Tomberlin, Ed., Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 15: Metaphysics,Atascadero, Ridgeview Publishing: 17-36, here: p. 17.[2]Rowlands, M., (2003), Externalism. Putting Mind and World Back Together Again, Chesham, Acumen Publishing Limited.[3]Clark, A. and D. Chalmers, (1999), "The Extended Mind." in Analysis, 58(1): 10-23.[4]Gallagher, S., (2009), "Philosophical Antecedents of Situated Cognition" in P. Robbins and M. Aydede, Eds, The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.[5]Robbins, P. and M. Aydede, Eds, (2009), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.[6]Lycan, W. G., (2001), "The Case for Phenomenal Externalism" in J. E. Tomberlin, Ed., Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 15: Metaphysics,Atascadero, Ridgeview Publishing: 17-36.[7]Byrne, A. and M. Tye, (2006), "Qualia ain't in the Head." in Noûs, 40(2): 241-255.[8]Tonneau, F., (2004), "Consciousness Outside the Head." in Behavior and Philosophy, 32: 97-123.[9]Rockwell, T., (2005), Neither ghost nor brain, Cambridge (Mass), MIT Press.[10]Manzotti, R., (2006), "An alternative process view of conscious perception." in Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13(6): 45-79.[11]Holt, E. B., W. T. Marvin, et al., (1910), "The program and first platform of six realists." in The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology andScientific Methods, 7: 393-401.[12]Holt 1914, p. 142[13]Brooks, R. A., (1991), "Intelligence Without Representations." in Artificial Intelligence Journal, 47: 139-159.[14]Whitehead, A. N., (1929/1978), Process and Reality, London, Free Press.[15]Griffin, D. R., (2007), Whitehead's Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy: An Argument for its Contemporary Relevance, Albany(NY), State University of New York Press.[16]Gibson, J. J., (1979), The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Boston, Houghton Mifflin.[17]Marr, D., (1982), Vision, S.Francisco, Freeman.[18]Churchland, P. S. and T. J. Sejnowski, (1992), The Computational Brain, Cambridge (Mass), MIT Press.[19]Bateson, G., (1972/2000), Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.[20]Bateson, G., (1979/2002), Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Cresskill (NJ), Hampton Press.[21]Putnam, H. (1975/1985) "The meaning of 'meaning'" (http://internalism.

googlegroups.

com/web/Putnam - The meaning of 'meaning'.pdf?gda=twdJY1oAAABFSTngQf24Sy1RD7yNn1iVgy3Odg0ZctAT1N_Bh2qhdGG1qiJ7UbTIup-M2XPURDQe1sJTwbuelxnpaL6JzH4yeFMfiRQRvg6UTOJg

In Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2: Mind, Language and Reality

. Cambridge University Press, 215

–

271, here: p. 227[22]Burge, T., (1979), "Individualism and the Mental" in French, Uehling and Wettstein, Eds, Midwest Studies in Philosophy IV, Minneapolis,University of Minnesota Press: 73-121.[23]Dretske, F., (1996), "Phenomenal externalism, or if meanings ain't in the head, where are qualia?" in Philosophical Issues, 7.[24]Jackson, F. and P. Pettit, (1988), "Functionalism and Broad Content." in Mind, 97(387): 381-400.[25]Dennett, D. C., (2000), "Making Tools for Thinking" in D. Sperber, Ed., Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, Oxford,Oxford University Press: 17-29.[26]Clark, A. and D. Chalmers, (1998), "The Extended Mind." in Analysis, 58(1): 10-23.[27]Clark, A., (2008), Supersizing the Mind, Oxford, Oxford University Press.[28]Chalmers, D., (2009), "Foreword" in A. Clark, Ed., Supersizing the Mind, Oxford, Oxford University Press: i-xxviii.[29]* Varela, F. J., E. Thompson, et al., (1991/1993), The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, Cambridge (Mass), MITPress.•Pfeifer, R. and J. Bongard, (2006), How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence (Bradford Books) New York,Bradford Books.•Pfeifer, R., M. Lungarella, et al., (2007), "Self-Organization, Embodiment, and Biologically Inspired Robotics." in Science, 5853(318):1088 - 1093.•Haugeland, J., (1998), "Mind embodied and embedded" in j. Haugeland, Ed., Having thought: Essays in the metaphysics of mind,Cambridge (Mass), Harward University Press.•Thelen, E., G. Schoner, et al., (2001), "The dynamics of embodiment: A field theory of infant perseverative reaching." in Behavioral andBrain Sciences, 24: 1-86.

Idealism57

The 20th century British scientist Sir James Jeans wrote that "theUniverse begins to look more like a great thought than like a greatmachine"

In philosophy,

idealism

is the family of views whichassert that reality, or reality as we can know it, isfundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwiseimmaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as askepticism about the possibility of knowing anymind-independent thing. As an ontological doctrine,idealism goes further, asserting that all entities arecomposed of mind or spirit.

[1]

Idealism thus rejectsphysicalist and dualist theories that fail to ascribe priorityto the mind.Religious and philosophical thought privileging theimmaterial or supernatural over the material and natural isubiquitous and ancient. However, the earliest extantarguments that the world of experience is grounded in themental derive from India and Greece. The Hindu idealistsin India and the Greek Neoplatonists gave pantheisticarguments for an all-pervading consciousness as theground or true nature of reality.

[2]

In contrast, theYogācāra school of Buddhism based their "mind-only"idealism to a greater extent on phenomenologicalanalyses of personal experience. This turn toward thesubjective anticipated empiricists such as GeorgeBerkeley, who revived idealism in 18th-century Europeby employing skeptical arguments against materialism.Beginning with Immanuel Kant, German idealists such as G. W. F. Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, FriedrichWilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Arthur Schopenhauer dominated 19th-century philosophy. This tradition, whichemphasized the mental or "ideal" character of all phenomena, birthed idealistic and subjectivist schools ranging fromBritish idealism to phenomenalism to existentialism to postmodernism. The historical influence of this branch of idealism remains central even to the schools that rejected its metaphysical assumptions, such as Marxism,pragmatism, and positivism.

Definitions

Idealism

is a term with several related meanings. It comes via

idea

from the Greek

idein

(ἰδεῖν), meaning "to see".The term entered the English language by 1796. In ordinary use, as when speaking of Woodrow Wilson's politicalidealism, it generally suggests the priority of ideals, principles, values, and goals over concrete realities. Idealists areunderstood to represent the world as it might or should be, unlike pragmatists, who focus on the world as it presentlyis. In the arts, similarly, idealism affirms imagination and attempts to realize a mental conception of beauty, astandard of perfection, in opposition to aesthetic naturalism and realism.

[3]

[4]

Any philosophy that assigns crucial importance to the ideal or spiritual realm in its account of human existence maybe termed "idealist". Metaphysical idealism is an ontological doctrine that holds that reality itself is incorporeal orexperiential at its core. Beyond this, idealists disagree on which aspects of the mental are more basic. Platonicidealism affirms that abstractions are more basic to reality than the things we perceive, while subjective idealists andphenomenalists tend to privilege sensory experience over abstract reasoning. Epistemological idealism is the weakerview that reality can only be known through ideas, that only psychological experience can be apprehended by themind.

[5]

[6]

[1]

Idealism58Subjective idealists like George Berkeley are anti-realists about a mind-independent world, whereas transcendentalidealists like Immanuel Kant are strong skeptics about such a world, affirming epistemological and not metaphysicalidealism. Thus Kant defines

idealism

as "the assertion that we can never be certain whether all of our putative outerexperience is not mere imagining".

[7]

However, not all idealists restrict the real or the knowable to our immediatesubjective experience. Objective idealists make claims about a transempirical world, but simply deny that this worldis essentially divorced from or ontologically prior to the mental. Thus Plato and Gottfried Leibniz affirm an objectiveand knowable reality transcending our subjective awareness

—

a rejection of epistemological idealism

—

but proposethat this reality is grounded in ideal entities, a form of metaphysical idealism. Nor do all metaphysical idealists agreeon the nature of the ideal; for Plato, the fundamental entities were non-mental abstract forms, while for Leibniz theywere proto-mental and concrete monads.

[8]

As a rule, transcendental idealists like Kant affirm idealism's epistemic side without committing themselves towhether reality is

ultimately

mental; objective idealists like Plato affirm reality's metaphysical basis in the mental orabstract without restricting their epistemology to ordinary experience; and subjective idealists like Berkeley affirmboth metaphysical and epistemological idealism.

[9]

Classical idealism

Monistic idealism holds that consciousness, not matter, is the ground of all being. It is monist because it holds thatthere is only one type of thing in the universe and idealist because it holds that one thing to be consciousness.Anaxagoras (480 BC) was known as "

Nous

" ("Mind") because he taught that "all things" were created by Mind, thatMind held the cosmos together and gave human beings a connection to the cosmos or a pathway to the divine.Many religious philosophies are specifically idealist. The belief that beings with knowledge (God/s, angels & spirits)preceded insentient matter seems to suggest that an experiencing subject is a necessary reality. Hindu idealism iscentral to Vedanta philosophy and to such schools as Kashmir Shaivism.

[10]

. Proponents include Amit Goswami,

[11]

P.R. Sarkar and his disciple Sohail Inayatullah.Christian theologians have held idealist views, often based on Neoplatonism, despite the influence of Aristotelianscholasticism from the 12th century onward. Later western theistic idealism such as that of Hermann Lotze offers atheory of the "world ground" in which all things find their unity: it has been widely accepted by Protestanttheologians.

[12]

Several modern religious movements, for example the organizations within the New ThoughtMovement and the Unity Church, may be said to have a particularly idealist orientation. One interpretation of thetheology of Christian Science includes a form of subjective idealism: it teaches that all that exists is God and God'sideas; that the world as it appears to the senses is a distortion of the underlying spiritual reality, a distortion that maybe corrected by a reorientation (spiritualization) of thought.Wang Yangming, a Ming Chinese neo-Confucian philosopher, official, educationist, calligraphist and general, heldthat objects do not exist entirely apart from the mind because the mind shapes them. It is not the world that shapesthe mind but the mind that gives reason to the world, so the mind alone is the source of all reason, having an innerlight, an innate moral goodness and understanding of what is good.The consciousness-only approach of the Yogācāra school of Mahayana Buddhism is not true metaphysicalidealism

[13]

as Yogācāra thinkers did not focus on consciousness to assert it as ultimately real, it is onlyconventionally real since it arises from moment to moment due to fluctuating causes and conditions and is significantbecause it is the cause of karma and hence suffering.

[14]

Idealism59

Platonism and neoplatonism

Plato's theory of forms or"ideas" describes ideal forms (for example the platonic solids in geometry or abstracts likeGoodness andJustice), as universals existing independently of any particular instance.

[15]

Arne Grøn calls thisdoctrine "the classic example of a metaphysical idealism as a

transcendent

idealism",

[16]

while Simone Klein callsPlato "the earliest representative of metaphysical objective idealism". Nevertheless Plato holds that matter is real,though transitory and imperfect, and is perceived by our body and its senses and given existence by the eternal ideasthat are perceived directly by our rational soul. Plato was therefore a metaphysical and epistemological dualist, anoutlook that modern idealism has striven to avoid:

[17]

Plato's thought cannot therefore be counted as idealist in themodern sense.With the neoplatonist Plotinus, wrote Nathaniel Alfred Boll; "there even appears, probably for the first time inWestern philosophy,

idealism

that had long been current in the East even at that time, for it taught

…

that the soul hasmade the world by stepping from eternity into time

…

".

[18]

[19]

Similarly, in regard to passages from the Enneads,"The only space or place of the world is the soul" and "Time must not be assumed to exist outside the soul",

[20]

Ludwig Noiré wrote: "For the first time in Western philosophy we find idealism proper in Plotinus,

[2]

However,Plotinus does not address whether we know external objects, unlike Schopenhauer and other modern philosophers.

Subjective idealism

Subjective Idealism (immaterialism or phenomenalism) describes a relationship between experience and the world inwhich objects are no more than collections or "bundles" of sense data in the perceiver. Proponents includeBerkeley,

[21]

Bishop of Cloyne, an Irish philosopher who advanced a theory he called immaterialism, later referredto as "subjective idealism", contending that individuals can only know sensations and ideas of objects directly, notabstractions such as "matter", and that ideas also depend upon being perceived for their very existence -

esse est percipi

; "to be is to be perceived".Arthur Collier

[22]

published similar assertions though there seems to have been no influence between the twocontemporary writers. The only knowable reality is the represented image of an external object. Matter as a cause of that image, is unthinkable and therefore nothing to us. An external world as absolute matter unrelated to an observerdoes not exist as far as we are concerned. The universe cannot exist as it appears if there is no perceiving mind.Collier was influenced by

An Essay Towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World

by "Cambridge Platonist"John Norris (1701).Bertrand Russell's popular book

The Problems of Philosophy

highlights Berkeley's tautological premise foradvancing idealism;"If we say that the things known must be in the mind, we are either un-duly limiting the mind's power of knowing, or we are uttering a mere tautology. We are uttering a mere tautology if we mean by 'in the mind' thesame as by 'before the mind', i.e. if we mean merely being apprehended by the mind. But if we mean this, weshall have to admit that what, in this sense, is in the mind, may nevertheless be not mental. Thus when werealize the nature of knowledge, Berkeley's argument is seen to be wrong in substance as well as in form, andhis grounds for supposing that 'idea'-i.e. the objects apprehended-must be mental, are found to have no validitywhatever. Hence his grounds in favour of the idealism may be dismissed."The Australian philosopher David Stove harshly criticized philosophical idealism, arguing that it rests on what hecalled "the worst argument in the world". Stove claims that Berkeley tried to derive a non-tautological conclusionfrom tautological reasoning. He argued that in Berkeley's case the fallacy is not obvious and this is because onepremise is ambiguous between one meaning which is tautological and another which, Stove argues, is logicallyequivalent to the conclusion.Alan Musgrave

[23]

argues that conceptual idealists compound their mistakes with use/mention confusions;Santa Claus the person does not exist.

Idealism60"Santa Claus" the name/concept/fairy tale does exist because adults tell children this every Christmas season(the distinction is highlighted by using quotation-marks when referring only to the name and not the object)and proliferation of hyphenated entities such as "thing-in-itself" (Immanuel Kant), "things-as-interacted-by-us"(Arthur Fine), "table-of-commonsense" and "table-of-physics" (Sir Arthur Eddington) which are "warning signs" forconceptual idealism according to Musgrave because they allegedly do not exist but only highlight the numerousways in which people come to know the world. This argument does not take into account the issues pertaining tohermeneutics, especially at the backdrop of analytic philosophy. Musgrave criticized Richard Rorty andPostmodernist philosophy in general for confusion of use and mention.A. A. Luce

[24]

and John Foster are other subjectivists.

[25]

Luce, in

Sense without Matter

(1954), attempts to bringBerkeley up to date by modernising his vocabulary and putting the issues he faced in modern terms, and treats theBiblical account of matter and the psychology of perception and nature. Foster's

The Case for Idealism

argues thatthe physical world is the logical creation of natural, non-logical constraints on human sense-experience. Foster'slatest defence of his views is in his book

A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenalistic Idealism

.Paul Brunton, a British philosopher, mystic, traveler, and guru, taught a type of idealism called "mentalism", similarto that of Bishop Berkeley, proposing a master world-image, projected or manifested by a world-mind, and aninfinite number of individual minds participating. A tree does not cease to exist if nobody sees it because theworld-mind is projecting the idea of the tree to all minds.

[26]

John Searle criticising some versions of idealism, summarises two important arguments for subjective idealism. Thefirst is based on our perception of reality;(1)

All we have access to in perception are the contents of our own experience

and(2)

The only epistemic basis for claims about the external world are our perceptual experiences

therefore;(3)

The only reality we can meaningfully speak of is that of perceptual experience

[27]

Whilst agreeing with (2) Searle argues that (1) is false and points out that (3) does not follow from (1) and (2). Thesecond argument runs as follows;

Premise: Any cognitive state occurs as part of a set of cognitive states and within a cognitive systemConclusion 1: It is impossible to get outside all cognitive states and systems to survey the relationshipsbetween them and the reality they cognizeConclusion 2: There is no cognition of any reality that exists independently of cognition

[28]

Searle contends that

Conclusion 2

does not follow from the premises.Epistemological idealism is a subjectivist position in epistemology that holds that what one knows about an objectexists only in one's mind. Proponents include Brand Blanshard.

Transcendental idealism

Transcendental idealism, founded by Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century, maintains that the mind shapes theworld we perceive into the form of space-and-time.... if I remove the thinking subject, the whole material world must at once vanish because it is nothing but aphenomenal appearance in the sensibility of ourselves as a subject, and a manner or species of representation.

—

Critique of Pure Reason

A383The 2nd edition (1787) contained a

Refutation of Idealism

to distinguish his transcendental idealism from Descartes'sSceptical Idealism and Berkeley's Dogmatic Idealism. The section

Paralogisms of Pure Reason

is an implicitcritique of Descartes' idealism. Kant says that it is not possible to infer the 'I' as an object (Descartes'

Cogito ergosum

) purely from "the spontaneity of thought". Kant focused on ideas drawn from British philosophers such as

Idealism61Locke, Berkeley and Hume but distinguished his transcendental or critical idealism from previous varieties;The dictum of all genuine idealists, from the Eleatic school to Bishop Berkeley, is contained in this formula:

“

All knowledge through the senses and experience is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in the ideas of thepure understanding and reason is there truth.

”

The principle that throughout dominates and determines my[transcendental] idealism is, on the contrary:

“

All knowledge of things merely from pure understanding or purereason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth.

” —

Prolegomena

, 374Kant distinguished things as they appear to an observer and things in themselves, "that is, things considered withoutregard to whether and how they may be given to us".

[29]

We cannot approach the

noumenon

, the "thing in Itself"(German:

Ding an sich

) without our own mental world. He added that the mind is not a blank slate,

tabula rasa

butrather comes equipped with categories for organising our sense impressions.In the first volume of his

Parerga and Paralipomena

, Schopenhauer wrote his "Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real". He defined the ideal as being mental pictures that constitute subjective knowledge. Theideal, for him, is what can be attributed to our own minds. The images in our head are what comprise the ideal.Schopenhauer emphasized that we are restricted to our own consciousness. The world that appears is only arepresentation or mental picture of objects. We directly and immediately know only representations. All objects thatare external to the mind are known indirectly through the mediation of our mind. He offered a history of the conceptof the "ideal" as "ideational" or "existing in the mind as an image".[T]rue philosophy must at all costs be

idealistic

; indeed, it must be so merely to be honest. For nothing is morecertain than that no one ever came out of himself in order to identify himself immediately with things different from him; but everything of which he has certain, sure, and therefore immediate knowledge, lies within hisconsciousness. Beyond this consciousness, therefore, there can be no

immediate

certainty ... There can neverbe an existence that is objective absolutely and in itself; such an existence, indeed, is positively inconceivable.For the objective, as such, always and essentially has its existence in the consciousness of a subject; it istherefore the subject's representation, and consequently is conditioned by the subject, and moreover by thesubject's forms of representation, which belong to the subject and not to the object.

—

The World as Will and Representation

, Vol. II, Ch. 1Charles Bernard Renouvier was the first Frenchman after Nicolas Malebranche to formulate a complete idealisticsystem, and had a vast influence on the development of French thought. His system is based on Immanuel Kant's, ashis chosen term "néo-criticisme" indicates; but it is a transformation rather than a continuation of Kantianism.Friedrich Nietzsche argued that Kant confuses tautology and petitio principii, and ridicules his pride in tackling "themost difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics."

[30]

. Yet he attacks the idealism of Schopenhauer and Descartes with an argument similar to Kant's critique of the latter

(see above)

;

Objective idealism

Objective idealism asserts that the reality of experiencing combines and transcends the realities of the objectexperienced and of the mind of the observer.

[31]

Proponents include Thomas Hill Green, Josiah Royce, BenedettoCroce and Charles Sanders Peirce.

[32]

Absolute idealism

Johann Fichte was the first German philosopher to make an attempt at a presuppositionless theory of knowledge,wherein nothing outside of thought is assumed to exist apart from the primordial analysis of the Ego. So that hisphilosophy could be solely grounded in itself, he assumed nothing without his Fichtean deductions from firstprinciples, and elaborated what he called a Wissenschaftslehre. Fichte denied Kant's noumenon and held thatconsciousness constitutes its own foundation, that the mental life of the Ego, of pure selfhood, relies upon nothing

Idealism62wholly external to itself and that the hypothesis of an outer world of any kind is the same thing as admitting aKantian realm.Schelling (1775

–

1854) claimed that the Fichte's "I" needs the Not-I, because there is no subject without object, andvice versa. So there is no difference between the subjective and the objective, that is, the ideal and the real. This isthe Schelling's "absolute identity": the ideas or mental images in the mind are identical to the extended objects whichare external to the mind.Absolute idealism is G. W. F. Hegel's account of how existence is comprehensible as an all-inclusive whole. Hegelcalled his philosophy "absolute" idealism in contrast to the "subjective idealism" of Berkeley and the "transcendentalidealism" of Kant and Fichte,

[33]

which were not based on a critique of the finite and a dialectical philosophy of history as Hegel's idealism was. The exercise of reason and intellect enables the philosopher to know ultimatehistorical reality, the phenomenological constitution of self-determination, the dialectical development of self-awareness and personality in the realm of History.In his

Science of Logic

(1812

–

1814) Hegel argues that finite qualities are not fully "real" because they depend onother finite qualities to determine them. Qualitative

infinity

, on the other hand, would be more self-determining andhence more fully real. Similarly finite natural things are less "real"

—

because they are less self-determining

—

thanspiritual things like morally responsible people, ethical communities and God. So any doctrine, such as materialism,that asserts that finite qualities or natural objects are fully real is mistaken.

[34]

Hegel certainly intends to preserve what he takes to be true of German idealism, in particular Kant's insistence thatethical reason can and does go beyond finite inclinations.

[35]

For Hegel there must be some identity of thought andbeing for the subject (human reason or consciousness) to be able to know an object (the world) at all.Kierkegaard criticised Hegel's idealist philosophy in several of his works, particularly his claim to a comprehensivesystem that could explain the whole of reality. Where Hegel argues that an ultimate understanding of the logicalstructure of the world is an understanding of the logical structure of God's mind, Kierkegaard asserting that for Godreality can be a system but it cannot be so for any human individual because both reality and humans are incompleteand all philosophical systems imply completeness. A logical system is possible but an existential system is not."What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational".

[36]

Hegel's absolute idealism blurs the distinction betweenexistence and thought: our mortal nature places limits on our understanding of reality;So-called systems have often been characterized and challenged in the assertion that they abrogate thedistinction between good and evil, and destroy freedom. Perhaps one would express oneself quite asdefinitely, if one said that every such system fantastically dissipates the concept existence. ... Being anindividual man is a thing that has been abolished, and every speculative philosopher confuses himself with humanity at large; whereby he becomes something infinitely great, and at the same time nothing atall.

[37]

A major concern of Hegel's

Phenomenology of Spirit

(1807) and of the philosophy of Spirit that he lays out in his

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences

(1817

–

1830) is the interrelation between individual humans, which heconceives in terms of "mutual recognition." However, what Climacus means by the aforementioned statement, is thatHegel, in the

Philosophy of Right

, believed the best solution was to surrender one's individuality to the customs of the State, identifying right and wrong in view of the prevailing bourgeois morality. Individual human will ought, atthe State's highest level of development, to properly coincide with the will of the State. Climacus rejects Hegel'ssuppression of individuality by pointing out it is impossible to create a valid set of rules or system in any societywhich can adequately describe existence for any one individual. Submitting one's will to the State denies personalfreedom, choice, and responsibility.In addition, Hegel does believe we can know the structure of God's mind, or ultimate reality. Hegel agrees withKierkegaard that both reality and humans are incomplete, inasmuch as we are in time, and reality develops through

Idealism63time. But the relationbetween time and eternity is outside time and this is the "logical structure" that Hegel thinks we can know.Kierkegaard disputes this assertion, because it eliminates the clear distinction between ontology and epistemology. Existence and thought are not identical and one cannot possibly think existence. Thought is always aform of abstraction, and thus not only is pure existence impossible to think, but all forms in existence areunthinkable; thought depends on language, which merely abstracts from experience, thus separating us from livedexperience and the living essence of all beings. In addition, because we are finite beings, we cannot possibly know orunderstand anything that is universal or infinite such as God, so we cannot know God exists, since that whichtranscends time simultaneously transcends human understanding.Bradley saw reality as a monistic whole apprehended through "feeling", a state in which there is no distinctionbetween the perception and the thing perceived. Like Berkeley Bradley thought that nothing can be known to existunless it is known by a mind.We perceive, on reflection, that to be real, or even barely to exist, must be to fall within sentience ... . Find anypiece of existence, take up anything that any one could possibly call a fact, or could in any sense assert to havebeing, and then judge if it does not consist in sentient experience. Try to discover any sense in which you canstill continue to speak of it, when all perception and feeling have been removed; or point out any fragment of its matter, any aspect of its being, which is not derived from and is not still relative to this source. When theexperiment is made strictly, I can myself conceive of nothing else than the experienced.

—

F.H. Bradley,

'Appearance and Reality

', Chapter 14Bradley was the apparent target of G. E. Moore's radical rejection of idealism. Moore claimed that Bradley did notunderstand the statement that something is real. We know for certain, through common sense and prephilosophicalbeliefs, that some things are real,whether they are objects of thought or not, according to Moore. The 1903 article

The Refutation of Idealism

isone of the first demonstrations of Moore's commitment to analysis. He examines eachof the three terms in the Berkeleian aphorism

esse est percipi

, "to be is to be perceived", finding that itmust meanthat the object and the subject are

necessarily

connected so that "yellow" and "the sensation of yellow" are identical -"to be yellow" is "to be experienced as yellow". But it also seems there is a difference between "yellow" and "thesensation of yellow" and "that

esse

is held to be

percipi

, solely because what is experienced is held to be identicalwith the experience of it". Though far from a complete refutation, this was the first strong statement by analyticphilosophy against its idealist predecessors, or at any rate against the type of idealism represented by Berkeley. Thisargument did not show that the GEM (in post

–

Stove vernacular, see below) is logically invalid.

Actual idealism

Actual Idealism is a form of idealism developed by Giovanni Gentile that grew into a "grounded" idealismcontrasting Kant and Hegel.

Pluralistic idealism

Pluralistic

idealism such as that of Gottfried Leibniz

[38]

takes the view that there are many individual minds that together underlie theexistence of the observed world and make possible the existence of the physical universe.

[39]

Unlike absoluteidealism, pluralistic idealism does not assume the existence of a single ultimate mentalreality or "Absolute". Leibniz' form of idealism, known as Panpsychism, views "monads" as the true atoms of the universe andas entities having perception. The monads are "substantial forms of being",elemental, individual, subject to their ownlaws, non-interacting, each reflecting the entire universe. Monads are centers of force, which is substance whilespace, matter and motion are phenomenal and their form and existence is dependent on the simple and immaterialmonads. There is a pre-established harmony established by God, the central monad, between the world in the mindsof the monads and the external world of objects. Leibniz's cosmology embraced traditional Christian Theism.Personalism is the view that the minds that underlie reality are the minds of persons. Borden Parker Bowne, aphilosopher at Boston University, a founder and popularizer of personal idealism, presented it as a substantive reality

Idealism64of persons, the only reality, as known directly in self-consciousness. Reality is a society of interacting personsdependent on the Supreme Person of God.

[40]

Other proponents include George Holmes Howison

[41]

and J. M. E.McTaggart.

[42]

Howison's personal idealism

[43]

was also called "California Personalism" by others to distinguish it from the"Boston Personalism" which was of Bowne. Howison maintained that both impersonal, monistic idealism andmaterialism run contrary to the experience of moral freedom. To deny freedom to pursue truth, beauty, and"benignant love" is to undermine every profound human venture, including science, morality, and philosophy.Personalistic idealists Borden Parker Bowne and Edgar S. Brightman and realistic personal theist Saint ThomasAquinas address a core issue, namely that of dependence upon an infinite personal God.

[44]

Howison, in his book

The Limits of Evolution and Other Essays Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Idealism

, created a democratic notion of personal idealism that extended all the way to God, who was no more theultimate monarch but the ultimate democrat in eternal relation to other eternal persons. J. M. E. McTaggart's idealistatheism and Thomas Davidson's Apeirionism resemble Howisons personal idealism.

[45]

J. M. E. McTaggart, of Cambridge University, argued that minds alone exist and only relate to each other throughlove. Space, time and material objects are unreal. In

The Unreality of Time

he argued that time is anillusion becauseit is impossible to produce a coherent account of a sequence of events.

The Nature of Existence

(1927) contained hisarguments thatspace, time, and matter cannot possibly be real. In his

Studies in Hegelian Cosmology

(Cambridge,1901, p196) he declared that metaphysics are not relevant to social and political action. McTaggart "thought thatHegel was wrong in supposing that metaphysics could show that the state is more than a means to the good of theindividuals who compose it".

[46]

For McTaggart "philosophy can give us very little, if any, guidance in action... Whyshould a Hegelian citizen be surprised that his belief as to the organic nature of the Absolute does not help him indeciding how to vote? Would a Hegelian engineer be reasonable in expecting that his belief that all matter is spiritshould help him in planning a bridge?

[47]

Thomas Davidson taught a philosophy called "apeirotheism", a "form of pluralistic idealism...coupled with a sternethical rigorism"

[48]

which he defined as "a theory of Gods infinite in number." The theory was indebted toAristotle's pluralism and his concepts of Soul, the rational, living aspect of a living substance which cannot existapart from the body because it is not a substance but an essence, and

nous

, rational thought, reflection andunderstanding. Although a perennial source of controversy, Aristotle arguably views the latter as both eternal andimmaterial in nature, as exemplified in his theology of unmoved movers.

[49]

Identifying Aristotle's God with rationalthought, Davidson argued, contrary to Aristotle, that just as the soul cannot exist apart from the body, God cannotexist apart from the world.

[50]

Idealism in the philosophy of science

Nicolas Malebranche, though a student of Cartesian rationalism, disagreed that the existence of the external world isdubious and known only indirectly and declared instead that the real external world is actually God. ForMalebranche we directly know internally the ideas in our mind. Externally, we directly know God's operations. Thiskind of idealism led to the pantheism of Spinoza.Idealist notionstook a strong hold among physicists of the early 20th century confronted with the paradoxes of quantum physics and the theory of relativity. In

The Grammar of Science

, Preface to the 2nd Edition, 1900, KarlPearson wrote, "There are many signs that a sound idealism is surely replacing, as a basis for natural philosophy, thecrude materialism of the older physicists." This book influenced Einstein's regard for the importance of the observerin scientific measurements. In § 5 of that book, Pearson asserted that "...science is in reality a classification andanalysis of the contents of the mind...." Also, "...the field of science is much more consciousness than an externalworld."Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, a British astrophysicist of the early 20th century, wrote in his book

The Nature of the Physical World

; "The stuff of the world is mind-stuff";

Idealism65"The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds

…

. Themind-stuff is not spread in space and time; these are part of the cyclic scheme ultimately derived out of it

…

. It isnecessary to keep reminding ourselves that all knowledge of our envi-ronment from which the world of physics isconstructed, has entered in the form of messages transmitted along the nerves to the seat of consciousness

…

.Consciousness is not sharply defined, but fades into subconsciousness; and beyond that we must postulate somethingindefinite but yet continuous with our mental nature

…

. It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept theview that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and mostdirect thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference."

[51]

Ian Barbour in his book Issues in Science and Religion (1966), p. 133, cites Arthur Eddington's The Nature of thePhysical World (1928) for a text that argues The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principles provides a scientific basis for"the defense of the idea of human freedom" and his Science and the Unseen World (1929) for support of philosophical idealism "the thesis that reality is basically mental".Sir James Jeans wrote; "The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe beginsto look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder intothe realm of matter... we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter."

[52]

In an interview published in The Observer (London), when asked the question: "Do you believe that life on thisplanet is the result of some sort of accident, or do you believe that it is a part of some great scheme?", Jeans replied;"I incline to the idealistic theory that consciousness is fundamental, and that the material universe is derivative fromconsciousness, not consciousness from the material universe... In general the universe seems to me to be nearer to agreat thought than to a great machine. It may well be, it seems to me, that each individual consciousness ought to becompared to a brain-cell in a universal mind.""What remains is in any case very different from the full-blooded matter and the forbidding materialism of theVictorian scientist. His objective and material universe is proved to consist of little more than constructs of our ownminds. To this extent, then, modem physics has moved in the direction of philosophic idealism. Mind and matter, if not proved to be of similar nature, are at least found to be ingredients of one single system. There is no longer roomfor the kind of dualism which has haunted philosophy since the days of Descartes." Sir James Jeans addressing theBritish Association in 1934."Finite picture whose dimensions are a certain amount of space and a certain amount of time; the protons andelectrons are the streaks of paint which define the picture against its space-time background. Traveling as far back intime as we can, brings us not to the creation of the picture, but to its edge; the creation of the picture lies as muchoutside the picture as the artist is outside his canvas. On this view, discussing the creation of the universe in terms of time and space is like trying to discover the artist and the action of painting, by going to the edge of the canvas. Thisbrings us very near to those philosophical systems which regard the universe as a thought in the mind of its Creator,thereby reducing all discussion of material creation to futility." Sir James Jeans "The universe around us" page 317.

Notes

[1]Daniel Sommer Robinson, "Idealism",

Encyclopedia Brittanica

, http://www.

britannica.

com/EBchecked/topic/281802/idealism[2]Ludwig Noiré,

Historical Introduction to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

[3]http://dictionary.

reference.

com/browse/idealism Dictionary.com[4]http://www.

merriam-webster.

com/dictionary/idealism Merriam-Webster[5]In

On The Freedom of the Will

, Schopenhauer noted the ambiguity of the word

idealism

, calling it a "term with multiple meanings". ForSchopenhauer, idealists seek to account for the relationship between our ideas and external reality, rather than for the nature of reality as such.Non-Kantian idealists, on the other hand, theorized about mental aspects of the reality underlying phenomena.[6]Philip J. Neujahr would "restrict the idealist label to theories which hold that the world, or its material aspects, are dependent upon thespecifically cognitive activities of the mind or Mind in perceiving or thinking about (or 'experiencing') the object of its awareness." Philip J.Neujahr,

Kant's Idealism

, Ch. 1[7]Immanuel Kant, Notes and Fragments, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. by Curtis Bowman, Paul Guyer, and Frederick Rauscher, Cambridge UniversityPress, 2005, p. 318, ISBN 0-521-55248-6

Idealism66

[8]Mark Kulstad and Laurence Carlin, "Leibniz's Philosophy of Mind",

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

, http://plato.

stanford.

edu/ entries/leibniz-mind/ [9]ARNE GRØN. "Idealism" (http://www.enotes.com/science-religion-encyclopedia/idealism).

Encyclopedia of Science and Religion

. .Retrieved 1 August 2011.[10]"Among the various Hindu philosophies, Kashmir Shaivism (Kaśmir Śaivism) is a school of Śaivism identical with trika Śaivismcategorized by various scholars as monistic idealism" http://www.

allsaivism.

com/articles/KashmirSaivism.

aspx[11]Interview with Amit Goswami about monistic idealism http://twm.co.nz/goswam1.

htm[12]http://www.

britannica.

com/EBchecked/topic/648307/world-ground[13]Ian Charles Harris,

The Continuity of Madhyamaka and Yogacara in Indian Mahayana Buddhism.

E.J. Brill, 1991, page 133.[14]Dan Lusthaus, "What is and isn't Yogācāra." (http://www.acmuller.

net/yogacara/articles/intro-uni.

htm).[15]J.D.McNair. "Plato's Idealism" (http://faculty.mdc.edu/jmcnair/Joe6pages/Plato's Idealism.

htm).

Students' notes

. MIAMI-DADECOMMUNITY COLLEGE. . Retrieved 7 August 2011.[16]

Arne Grøn. "Idealism"

(http://www.

enotes.com/science-religion-encyclopedia/idealism)

.

Encyclopedia of Scienceand Religion

(http://www.

enotes.

com/science-religion-encyclopedia)

. eNotes. . Retrieved 7 August 2011.

[17]Simone Klein. "What is objective idealism?" (http://www.philosophos.

com/knowledge_base/archives_12/philosophy_questions_12.html).

Philosophy Questions

. Philosophos. . Retrieved 7 August 2011.[18]'For there is for this universe no other place than the soul or mind'

(neque est alter hujus universi locus quam anima) Enneads

, iii, lib. vii, c.10[19]

(oportet autem nequaquam extra animam tempus accipere)

Arthur Schopenhauer,

Parerga and Paralipomena

, Volume I, "Fragments for the History of Philosophy," § 7[20]

Enneads

, iii, 7, 10[21]" Berkeley's version of Idealism is usually referred to as Subjective Idealism or Dogmatic Idealism" http://www.

philosophybasics.

com/ branch_idealism.

html[22]Clavis Universalis, or A New Inquiry after Truth, being a Demonstration of the NonExistence or Impossibility of an External World ByArthur Collier[23]Alan Musgrave, in an article titled

Realism and Antirealism

in R. Klee (ed),

Scientific Inquiry: Readings in the Philosophy of Science

,Oxford, 1998, 344-352 - later re-titled to

Conceptual Idealism and Stove's GEM

in A. Musgrave, Essays on Realism and Rationalism, Rodopi,1999 also in M.L. Dalla Chiara et al. (eds),

Language, Quantum, Music

, Kluwer, 1999, 25-35 - Alan Musgrave[24]Sense Without Matter Or Direct Perception By A.A. Luce[25]Review for John Fosters book A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenalistic Idealism http://ndpr.

nd.

edu/review.

cfm?id=15785[26]http://www.

stillnessspeaks.

com/images/uploaded/file/Paul%20Brunton.pdf [27]John Searle,

The Construction of Social Reality

p. 172[28]John Searle,

The Construction of Social Reality

p. 174[29]

Critique of Pure Reason

, A 140[30]Friedrich Nietzsche,

Beyond Good and Evil

, Part 1 On the Prejudice of Philosophers Section 11[31]Dictionary definition http://dictionary.reference.

com/browse/objective+idealism[32]http://www.

philosophybasics.

com/branch_idealism.html Section; Objective Idealism[33]One book devoted to showing that Hegel is neither a Berkeleyan nor a Kantian idealist is Kenneth Westphal,

Hegel's Epistemological Realism

(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989).[34]An interpretation of Hegel's critique of the finite, and of the "absolute idealism" which Hegel appears to base that critique, is found in RobertM. Wallace, Hegel's Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).[35]See Wallace,

Hegel's Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God

, chapter 3, for details on how Hegel might preserve something resemblingKant's dualism of nature and freedom while defending it against skeptical attack.[36]Søren Kierkegaard,

Elements of the Philosophy of Right

(1821)[37]Søren Kierkegaard,

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

(1846)[38]See Pluralistic Idealism, Version 1: Monadism http://www.eskimo.

com/~msharlow/idealism.

htm[39]See Idealistic Theory No. 3: Pluralistic Idealism http://www.eskimo.com/~msharlow/idealism.

htm[40]http://www.

radicalacademy.

com/amphilosophy6.htm[41]The Limits Of Evolution; And Other Essays Illustrating The Metaphysical Theory Of Personal Idealism By George Holmes Howison[42]See the book Idealistic Argument in Recent British and American Philosophy By Gustavus W Cunningham page 202 "Ontologically i am anidealist, since i believe that all that exists is spiritual. I am also, in one sense of the term, a Personal Idealist."[43]http://www.

howison.

us/george_holmes_howison.

htm[44]http://www.

bookrags.

com/research/howison-george-holmes-18341916-eoph/ [45]http://muse.

jhu.

edu/login?uri=/journals/journal_of_speculative_philosophy/v020/20.

3mclachlan.

html[46]

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy

, vol. 3, "Idealism," New York, 1967[47]

Studies in Hegelian Cosmology

ibid.[48]Charles M. Bakewell, "Thomas Davidson," Dictionary of American Biography, gen. ed. Dumas Malone (New York: Charles Scribner'sSons, 1932), 96.

Idealism67

[49]Gerson, Lloyd P. (2004).

The Unity of Intellect in Aristotle's "De Anima"

(http://individual.

utoronto.

ca/lpgerson/ The_Unity_Of_Intellect_In_Aristotles_De_Anima.

pdf).

49

. 348

–

373. JSTOR 4182761. . "Desperately difficult texts inevitably elicitdesperate hermeneutical measures. Aristotle's

De Anima,

book three, chapter five, is evidently one such text. At least since the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias, scholars have felt compelled to draw some remarkable conclusions regarding Aristotle's brief remarks in thispassage regarding intellect. One such claim is that in chapter five, Aristotle introduces a second intellect, the so-called 'agent intellect', anintellect distinct from the 'passive intellect', the supposed focus of discussion up until this passage. This view is a direct descendent of the viewof Alexander himself, who identified the agent intellect with the divine intellect. Even the staunchest defender of such a view is typically at aloss to give a plausible explanation of why the divine intellect pops into and then out of the picture in the intense and closely argueddiscussion of the human intellect that goes from chapter four through to the end of chapter seven."[50]Davidson, Journal, 1884-1898 (Thomas Davidson Collection, Manuscript Group #169, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University). Quotedin DeArmey, "Thomas Davidson's Apeirotheism," 692[51]A.S. Eddington,

The Nature of the Physical World

, page 276-81.[52]Sir James Jeans,

The mysterious universe

, page 137.

References

•

Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason with an historical introduction by Ludwig Noiré

, available at (http:// www.

books.

google.

com/)•Kierkegaard, Søren.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

, Princeton, ISBN 978-0-691-02081-5•Neujahr, Philip J.,

Kant's Idealism

, Mercer University Press, 1995 ISBN 0-86554-476-X•Watts, Michael.

Kierkegaard

, Oneworld, ISBN 978-1-85168-317-8

External links

•A.C. Grayling-Wittgenstein on Scepticism and Certainty (http://www.

acgrayling.

com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=76:wittgenstein-on-scepticism-and-certainty&catid=28:wittgenstein)•Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy (http://www.

spirituality.

com/dt/toc_sh. jhtml): idealism in religious thought•Idealism and its practical use in physics and psychology (http://shvetsandrey.narod.

ru/index.

html)•'The Triumph of Idealism' (http://www.gresham.ac.

uk/event.

asp?PageId=45&EventId=678), lecture byProfessor Keith Ward offering a positive view of Idealism, at Gresham College, 13 March 2008 (available in text,audio, and video download)

Logical positivism68

Logical positivism

(also known as

logical empiricism

,

scientific philosophy

, and

neo-positivism

) is a philosophythat combines empiricism

—

the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge

—

with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions of epistemology. It may beconsidered as a type of analytic philosophy.

[1]

Logical positivism, in the formal sense, began from discussions of a group known as the "First Vienna Circle" whichgathered during the earliest years of the 20th century in Vienna at the Café Central. After World War I, Hans Hahn, amember of that early group, helped bring Moritz Schlick to Vienna. Schlick's Vienna Circle, along withHans Reichenbach's "Berlin Circle", propagated the new doctrines more widely during the 1920s and early 1930s. It wasOtto Neurath's advocacy that made the movementself-conscious and more widely known. A 1929 pamphlet written by Neurath, Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap summarized the doctrines of the Vienna Circle at that time. The doctrinesincluded the opposition to all metaphysics, especially ontology and synthetic a priori propositions; the rejection of metaphysics not as wrong but as having no meaning; a criterion of meaning based on Ludwig Wittgenstein's earlywork; the idea that all knowledge should be codifiable by a single standard language of science; and above all theproject of "rational reconstruction," in which ordinary-language concepts were gradually to be replaced by moreprecise equivalents in that standard language.During the early 1930s, the ViennaCircle dispersed, mainly because of political upheaval and the untimely deaths of Hahn and Schlick. The most prominent proponents of logical positivism emigrated to the United Kingdom and theUnited States, where they influenced American philosophy considerably. Until the 1950s, logical positivism was theleading school in the philosophy of science. During this period, Carnap proposed a replacement for the earlierdoctrines in his "Logical Syntax of Language". This change of emphasis and the somewhat different opinions of Reichenbach and others resulted in a consensus that the English name for the shared doctrine, in its American exilefrom the late 1930s, should be "logical empiricism."

Summary

During the late 1920s, '30s, and '40s, BertrandRussell and Ludwig Wittgenstein's formalism was developed by a group of philosophers in Vienna and Berlin, who formed the Vienna Circle and Berlin Circle into a doctrine knownas logical positivism (or logical empiricism). Logical positivism used formal logic to underpin an empiricist accountof our knowledge of the world.

[2]

Philosophers such as Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, along with othermembers of the Vienna Circle, claimed that the truths of logic and mathematics were tautologies, and those of science were verifiable empirical claims. These two constituted the entire universe of meaningful judgements;anything else was nonsense.The claims of ethics and aesthetics were subjective preferences. Theology and other metaphysics werepseudo-statements, neither true nor false, simply meaningless nonsense. Karl Popper's insistence upon the role of falsification in the philosophy of science was a reaction to the logical positivists.

[3]

With the rise of Adolf Hitler andNational Socialism in Germany and Austria, some members of the Vienna and Berlin Circles fled Germany, mainlyto Britain and the USA, which helped to reinforce the dominance of logical positivism and analytic philosophy in theAnglophone world.

[4]

Logical positivists typically considered philosophy as having a very limited function. For them, philosophy isconcerned with the organization of thoughts, rather than having distinct topics of its own. The positivists adopted theprinciple of verificationism, according to which every meaningful statement is either analytic or is capable of beingverified by experience. This caused the logical positivists to reject many traditional problems of philosophy,especially those of metaphysics or ontology, as meaningless.

Logical positivism69

Origins

The main influences on the early logical positivists were the positivist Ernst Mach, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russelland the young Ludwig Wittgenstein.Mach's influence is most apparent in the logical positivists' persistent concern with metaphysics, the unity of science,and the interpretation of the theoretical terms of science, as well as the doctrines of reductionism andphenomenalism, later abandoned by many positivists.Wittgenstein's

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

was a text of great importance for the positivists. The

Tractatus

introduced many doctrineswhich laterinfluenced logical positivism, including the concept of philosophy as a "critique of language," and the possibility of making a theoretically principled distinction between intelligible andnonsensical discourse. The

T ractatus

also adhered toa correspondence theory of truth which the positivists adopted, although some, like Otto Neurath, preferred a form of coherentism. Wittgenstein's influence is also evident in certainformulations of the verification principle. Compare, for example,

Proposition 4.024

of the

Tractatus

, whereWittgenstein asserts that we understand a proposition when we know what happens if it is true, with Schlick'sassertion that "To state the circumstances under which a proposition is true is the same as stating its meaning."

[5]

Thetractarian doctrine that the truths of logic are tautologies was widely believed among the logical positivists.Wittgenstein also influenced the logical positivists' interpretation of probability. According to Neurath, some logicalpositivists disliked the

Tractatus

, since they thought it included a great deal of metaphysics.

[6]

Contemporary developments in logic and the foundations of mathematics, especially Bertrand Russell and AlfredNorth Whitehead's monumental

Principia Mathematica

, impressed the more mathematically minded logicalpositivists such as Hans Hahn and Rudolf Carnap. "Language-planning" and syntactical techniques derived fromthese developments were used to defend logicism in the philosophy of mathematics and various reductionist theses.Russell's theory of types was employed to great effect in Carnap's early anti-metaphysical polemics.

[7]

Immanuel Kant also had an important influence on the positivists, both positive and negative. Negatively, Kant wasoften scorned by the positivists in their early debates, and Kant's doctrine of

synthetic a priori

truths was the doctrinethey most wished to discredit. However, Kant's opinions about the nature of physical objects pervaded the "protocolsentence" debate,

[8]

and Kantian opinions of the relationship between philosophy and science were shared by thepositivists to some degree.

[9]

Logical positivism in Germany

Positivism in Germany is thought to have developed in response to Hegelian and neo-Hegelian metaphysics, whichwas a famous philosophy in Germany.

[10]

Hegelian "successors" such as F.H. Bradley attempted to explain reality bypostulating metaphysical entities that did not have any empirical basis.

[10]

Logical positivists in response wanted tostop such metaphysical entities from being used as an explanation.Another, less well-known factor that encouraged logical positivism was the urgency of solving new philosophicalproblems raised by new scientific developments. The Vienna Circle under the influence of Moritz Schlick and theBerlin Circle under the influence of Hans Reichenbach consisted of scientists, mathematicians, and scientists turnedphilosophers, who shared a common goal of solving new problems in the philosophy of science.

Basic tenets

Although the logical positivists held a wide range of views on many matters, they were all interested in science andskeptical of theology and metaphysics. Early, most logical positivists proposed that all knowledge is based on logicalinference from simple "protocol sentences" grounded in observable facts. Many logical positivists endorsed forms of materialism, metaphysical naturalism, and empiricism. (See James Ladyman,

Understanding Philosophy of Science

,p. 147

)

Logical positivism70Perhaps the view for whichthe logical positivists are best known is the verifiability criterion of meaning, or verificationism. In one of its earlier and stronger formulations, this is the doctrine that a proposition is "cognitivelymeaningful" only if there is a finite procedure for conclusively determining its truth.

[11]

An intended consequence of this opinion, for most logical positivists, is that metaphysical, theological, and ethical statements fail this criterion,and so are not cognitively meaningful.

[12]

They distinguished cognitive from other varieties of meaningfulness (e.g.emotive, expressive, figurative), and most authors concede that the non-cognitive statements of the history of philosophy possess some other kind of meaningfulness. The positive characterization of cognitive meaningfulnessvaries from author to author. It has been described as the property of having a truth value, corresponding to apossible state of affairs, naming a proposition, or being intelligible or understandable in the sense in which scientificstatements are intelligible or understandable.

[13]

Another characteristic feature of logical positivism is the commitment to "Unified Science"; that is, the developmentof a common language or, in Neurath's phrase, a "universal slang" in which all scientific propositions can beexpressed.

[14]

The adequacy of proposals or fragments of proposals for such a language was often asserted on thebasis of various "reductions" or "explications" of the terms of one special science to the terms of another, putativelymore fundamental one. Sometimes these reductions consisted of set-theoretic manipulations of a few logicallyprimitive concepts (as in Carnap's (1928)

Logical Structure of the World

); sometimes these reductions consisted of allegedly analytic or

a priori

deductive relationships (as in Carnap's

Testability and Meaning

). A number of publications over a period of thirty years would attempt to elucidate this concept.

Influence

Logical positivism spread throughout almost the entire western world. It was disseminated throughout the Europeancontinent. It was spread to Britain by the influence of A. J. Ayer. And later, it was brought to American universitiesby members of the Vienna Circle after they fled Europe and settled in the United States during and after WWII.Logical positivism was essential to the development of early analytic philosophy. The term subsequently came to bealmost interchangeable with "analytic philosophy" during the first half of the twentieth century. Logical positivismwas immensely influential in the philosophy of language and represented the dominant philosophy of sciencebetween World War I and the Cold War.

Criticisms

Early critics of logical positivism said that its fundamental tenets could not themselves be formulated consistently.The verifiability criterion of meaning did not seem verifiable; but neither was it simply a logical tautology, since ithad implications for the practice of science and the empirical truth of other statements. This presented severeproblems for the logical consistency of the theory. Another problem was that, while positive existential claims("there is at least one human being") and negated universal claims ("not all ravens are black") allow for obviousmethods of verification (find a human or a non-black raven), negative existential claims and positive universalclaims do not allow for verification.Universal claims could apparently never be verified: How can you tell that

all ravens are black

, unless you've hunteddown every raven, including those of the past and future? This resulted in a great deal of work on induction,probability, and "confirmation," which combined verification and falsification.Logical positivists' response to the first criticism was that logical positivism is a philosophy of science, not anaxiomatic system that can prove its own consistency (see Godel's incompleteness theorem). Secondly, a theory of language and mathematical logic were created to answer what it really means to make statements like "all ravens areblack."Many commentators (including those of the preceding section) on logical positivism have attributed to its proponentsa greater unity of purpose and creed than they actually shared, ignoring the complex disagreements among the

Logical positivism71logical positivists themselves.

Karl Popper's objection

A well-known critic of logical positivism was Karl Popper, who published the book

Logik der Forschung

in 1934(translated by himself as

The Logic of Scientific Discovery

, published 1959). In it he argued that the positivists'criterion of

verifiability

was too strong a criterion for science, and should be replaced by a criterion of falsifiability.Popper thought that falsifiability was a better criterion because it did not invite the philosophical problems inherentin verifying an inductive inference, and it allowed statements from the physical sciences which seemed scientific butwhich did not satisfy the verification criterion.Popper's concern was not with distinguishing meaningful from meaningless statements, but distinguishing scientificfrom metaphysical statements. Unlike the positivists, he did not claim that metaphysical statements must bemeaningless; he also claimed that a statement which was "metaphysical" and unfalsifiable in one century (like theancient Greek philosophy about atoms) could, in another century, be developed into falsifiable theories that have themetaphysical views as a consequence, and thus become scientific.Popper denied that science need rely on inductive reasoning, or that inductive reasoning actually exists, althoughmost philosophers think it obvious that science does rely on it.

[15]

A.J. Ayer's objection

A response to the second criticism was provided by A. J. Ayer in

Language, Truth and Logic

, in which he definesthe distinction between "strong" and "weak" verification. "A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the strong senseof the term, if, and only if, its truth could be conclusively established by experience." (Ayer 1946:50) It is this senseof verifiable that causes the problem of verification with negative existential claims and positive universal claims.However, the weak sense of verification states that a proposition is "verifiable... if it is possible for experience torender it probable" (ibid.). After establishing this distinction, Ayer claims that "no proposition, other than atautology, can possibly be anything more than a probable hypothesis" (Ayer 1946:51), and therefore can only besubject to weak verification. This defense was controversial among logical positivists, some of whom touted strongverification, and claimed that general propositions were indeed nonsense.

Hilary Putnam's objection

According to Hilary Putnam, a former student of Hans Reichenbach and Rudolf Carnap, making anobservational/theoretical distinction is meaningless. The "received view" operates on the

correspondence rule

thatstates "The observational terms are taken as referring to specified phenomena or phenomenal properties, and the onlyinterpretation given to the theoretical terms is their explicit definition provided by the correspondence rules."

[10]

Putnam argues that introducing this dichotomy of observational terms and theoretical terms is the problem fromwhich to start.

[16]

Putnam demonstrates this with four objections:1.Something is referred to as "observational" if it is observable directly with our senses. Then an observation termcannot be applied to something unobservable. If this is the case, there are no observation terms.2.With Carnap's classification, some unobservable terms are not even theoretical and belong to neither observationterms nor theoretical terms. Some theoretical terms refer primarily to observation terms.3.Reports of observation terms frequently contain theoretical terms.4.A scientific theory may not contain any theoretical terms (an example of this is the original Darwin's theory of evolution).

Logical positivism72

Subsequent objections from Quine and Kuhn

Subsequent philosophy of science tends to use certain aspects of both of these approaches. W. V. O. Quine criticizedthe distinction between analytic and synthetic statements and the reduction of meaningful statements to immediateexperience. Work by Thomas Kuhn has claimed that it is not possible to provide truth conditions for scienceindependent of its historical paradigm. But even this criticism was not unknown to the logical positivists: OttoNeurath compared science to a boat which we must rebuild on the open sea.

Contemporary status within philosophy

Most philosophers consider logical positivism to be, as John Passmore expressed it, "dead, or as dead as aphilosophical movement ever becomes."

[17]

By the late 1970s, its ideas were so generally recognized to be seriouslydefective that one of its own main proponents, A. J. Ayer, could say in a interview: "I suppose the most important[defect]...was that nearly all of it was false."

[17]

It retains an important place in the history of Analytic philosophy asthe antecedent of philosophies which continue now, such as Constructive empiricism, Positivism and Postpositivism.

Notes

[1]

See, e.g.,

: "Vienna Circle" (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/vienna-circle) in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy[2]Carnap, R. (1928). The Logical Structure of the World. ?.[3]Popper, Karl R. (2002). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-27844-9.[4]Prominent amongst these were Ludwig Wittgenstein and Rudolf Carnap. Karl Popper might also be included, since despite his rejection of theterm his method has much in common with the analytic tradition.[5]"Positivismus und Realismus",

Erkenntnis

3:1-31, English trans. in Sarkar, Sahotra (ed.) Logical Empiricism at its Peak: Schlick, Carnap, andNeurath. New York: Garland Pub., 1996, p. 38[6]For a very informative summary of the effect the Tractatus had on the main logical positivists, see the Entwicklung der Thesen des "WienerKreises" (http://www.

pitt.

edu/~philosop/images/doc4-full.

jpg)[7]See Carnap, Rudolf. "The Elimination Of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language". Erkenntnis 2 (1932). Rpt. in LogicalPositivism. Ed. Alfred Jules Ayer. New York: Free Press, 1959. 60-81.[8]See the essays by Schlick, Carnap, and Neurath in Ayer's

Logical Positivism

.[9]Friedman, Michael, Reconsidering Logical Positivism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.[10]Suppe, Frederick, The Positivist Model of Scientific Theories, in:

Scientific Inquiry,

Robert Klee editor, New York, USA: Oxford UniversityPress, 1999, pp. 16-24.[11]For a classic survey of other versions of verificationism, see Hempel, Carl. "Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning".

Revue Internationale de Philosophie

41 (1950), pp 41-63.[12]For the classic expression of this view, see Carnap, op. cit. Moritz Schlick, a major logical positivist, did not consider ethical (or aesthetic)sentences to be cognitively meaningless. See Schlick, Moritz. "The Future Of Philosophy". The Linguistic Turn. Ed. Richard Rorty. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1992. 43-53.[13]Examples of these different views can be found in Scheffler's

Anatomy of Inquiry

, Ayer's

Language, Truth, and Logic

, Schlick's "Positivismand Realism" (rpt. in Sarkar (1996) and Ayer (1959)), and Carnap's

Philosophy and Logical Syntax

.[14]For a thorough consideration of what the thesis of the unity of science amounts to, see Frost-Arnold, Gregory, "The Large-Scale Structure of Logical Empiricism: Unity of Science and the Rejection of Metaphysics" at (http://philsci-archive.

pitt.

edu/archive/00002005/01/ PSA2004Short.

rtf)[15]Okasha, S.,

the Philosophy of Science -- A Very Short Introduction

, Oxford University Press, 2002 p.23, ISBN 978-0-19-280283-5[16]Putnam, Hilary, Problems with the Observational/Theoretical Distinction, in:

Scientific Inquiry,

Robert Klee editor, New York, USA:Oxford University Press, 1999, pp.25-29.[17]Hanfling, Oswald (2003). "Logical Positivism".

Routledge History of Philosophy

. Routledge. pp. 193f.

Mysticism86

A perennial philosophy

The centuries-old idea of a perennial philosophy, popularized by Aldous Huxley in his 1945 book:

The Perennial Philosophy

, states one view of what mysticism is all about:[W]ith the one, divine reality substantial to the manifold world of things and lives and minds. But thenature of this one reality is such that it cannot be directly or immediately apprehended except by thosewho have chosen to fulfill certain conditions, making themselves loving, pure in heart, and poor inspirit.

[26]

The unknowable

According to Schopenhauer,

[27]

mystics arrive at a condition in which there is no knowing subject and known object:... we see all religions at their highest point end in mysticism and mysteries, that is to say, in darkness andveiled obscurity. These really indicate merely a blank spot for knowledge, the point where all knowledgenecessarily ceases. Hence for thought this can be expressed only by negations, but for sense-perception it isindicated by symbolical signs, in temples by dim light and silence, in Brahmanism even by the requiredsuspension of all thought and perception for the purpose of entering into the deepest communion with one'sown self, by mentally uttering the mysterious

Om

. In the widest sense, mysticism is every guidance to theimmediate awareness of what is not reached by either perception or conception, or generally by anyknowledge. The mystic is opposed to the philosopher by the fact that he begins from within, whereas thephilosopher begins from without. The mystic starts from his inner, positive, individual experience, in which hefinds himself as the eternal and only being, and so on. But nothing of this is communicable except theassertions that we have to accept on his word; consequently he is unable to convince.

—

Schopenhauer,

The World as Will and Representation

, Vol. II, Ch. XLVIII

References and footnotes

[1]Kerényi, Karoly, "Kore," in C.G. Jung and C. Kerényi,

Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis

. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963: pages 101-55.[2]Eliade, Mircea, A History of Religious Ideas: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.[3]W.F. Cobb. Mysticism and the Creed. BiblioBazaar, 2009. ISBN 978-1113209375[4]Evelyn Underhill. Practical Mysticism. Wilder Publications, new edition 2008. ISBN 978-1604595086[5]David Steindl-Rast. The Mystical Core of Organized Religion. ReVision, Summer 1989. 12 (1):11-14. Council on Spiritual Practices (http:// csp.

org/experience/docs/steindl-mystical.

html) Retrieved 29 October 2011[6]D.T. Suzuki. Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist. Routledge, 2002. ISBN 978-0415285865[7]Shunryu Suzuki. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Shambhala. New edition 2011.[8]Louth, Andrew., The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-19-929140-3.[9]King, Ursula. Christian Mystics: Their Lives and Legacies Throughout the Ages. London: Routledge 2004.[10]Fanning, Steven., Mystics of the Christian Tradition. New York: Routledge Press, 2001.[11]Michael R. Poll. Masonic Enlightenment - The Philosophy, History And Wisdom Of Freemasonry. Michael Poll Publishing, 2006.[12]S. N. Dasgupta. Hindu Mysticism. BiblioBazaar, 2009. ISBN 978-0559069895[13]Reynold A. Nicholson. Studies in Islamic Mysticism. Routledge. New edition 2001. ISBN 978-0700702787[14]T.K. Tukol. Yoga, Meditation & Mysticism in Jainism (Shri Raj Krishen Jain memorial lectures). Shri Raj Krishen Jain Charitable Trust,1978.[15]Elior, Rachel, Jewish Mysticism: The Infinite Expression of Freedom, Oxford. Portland, Oregon: The Littman Library of JewishCivilization, 2007.[16]A.E. Waite. Rosicrucian Rites and Ceremonies of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross by Founder of the Holy Order of the Golden Dawn.Ishtar, 2008. ISBN 978-0978388348[17]Mohan Singh Uberoi. Sikh Mysticism. 1964.[18]Krishna Chattopadhyay. The world of mystics: A comparative study of Baul, Sufi and Sikh mysticism. R.K. Prakashan, 1993.[19]Harold D Roth. Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism. Columbia University Press. NewEdition, 2004. ISBN 978-0231115650[20]Jalaluddin Rumi: Poems (http://www.

poemhunter.

com/i/ebooks/pdf/mewlana_jalaluddin_rumi_2004_9.

pdf)[21]Koun Yamada. The Gateless Gate: The Classic Book of Zen Koans. Wisdom Publications. New edition, 2005. ISBN 978-0861713820

Mysticism87

[22]Tao Te Ching. LinYutan version. Chapter 22, sentence 1. For other versions see

TTC Compared

(http://wayist.

org/ttc compared/chap22.htm)[23]Nasruddin stories (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Sufism/Nasrudin)[24]* Bektashi jokes (http://www.bektashi.net/beliefs-jokes1.html)[25]Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby (http://americanfolklore.net/folklore/2010/07/brer_rabbit_meets_a_tar_baby.

html) retold by S.E.Schlosser as 'A Georgia Folktale'. Retrieved 29 October 2011.[26]Huxley, Aldous (1945).

The Perennial Philosophy

. Perennial. ISBN 0-06-057058-X.[27]Schopenhauer, Arthur (1844).

Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung

.

2

.

Further reading

•Daniels, P., Horan A., (1987) "

Mystic Places

". Alexandria, Time-Life Books, ISBN 0-8094-6312-1.•Fanning, Steven.,

Mystics of the Christian Tradition.

New York: Routledge Press, 2001.•Louth, Andrew.,

The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN978-0-19-929140-3.•McGinn, Bernard,

The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism'.' Vol. 1 - 4. (

The Foundationsof Mysticism

;

The Growth of Mysticism

;

The Flowering of Mysticism

) New York: Crossroad, 1997-2005.

•"Buried Memories on the Acropolis. Freud's Relation to Mysticism and Anti-Semitism", International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, Volume 59 (1978): 199-208. (Jeffrey Masson and Terri C. Masson)•Chronicle Books.

Mysticism, the Experience of the Devine: Medieval Wisdom

. Labyrinth, 2004.•Underhill, Evelyn.

Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

(http://www.ccel.

org/ccel/underhill/mysticism.html). 1911•Stace, W. T.

Mysticism and Philosophy

. 1960.•Stace, W. T.

The Teachings of the Mystics

, 1960.•King, Ursula. Christian Mystics: Their Lives and Legacies Throughout the Ages. London: Routledge 2004.•Langer, Otto. Christliche Mystik im Mittelalter. Mystik und Rationalisierung

–

Stationen eines Konflikts.Darmstadt: 2004.•Kroll, Jerome, Bernard Bachrach, The Mystic Mind: The Psychology of Medieval Mystics and Ascetics, NewYork and London: Routledge, 2005.•Elior, Rachel,

Jewish Mysticism: The Infinite Expression of Freedom

, Oxford. Portland, Oregon: The LittmanLibrary of Jewish Civilization, 2007.•Louth, Andrew,

The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition

(Oxford: 2007).•Harmless, William,

Mystics.

(Oxford: 2008).•Otto, Rudolf (author); Bracy, Bertha L. (translator) & Payne, Richenda C. (1932, 1960).

Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism

. New York, N. Y., USA: The Macmillan Company•Dinzelbacher, Peter (hg),

Mystik und Natur. Zur Geschichte ihres Verhältnisses vom Altertum bis zur Gegenwart

(Berlin: 2009) (Theophrastus Paracelsus Studien, 1).•Merton, Thomas,

An Introduction to Christian Mysticism: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition, 3.

(Kalamazoo:2008) (Monastic Wisdom series).•Nelstrop, Louise, Kevin Magill and Bradley B. Onishi,

Christian Mysticism: An Introduction to ContemporaryTheoretical Approaches

(Aldershot: 2009).•Baba, Meher (1995). Discourses (http://www.discoursesbymeherbaba.

org). Myrtle Beach, S.C.: SheriarFoundation. ISBN 1-880619-09-1.

Perdurantism89

Perdurantism

orperdurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity.

[1]

The perdurantist view isthat an individualhas distinct temporal parts throughout its existence. (As opposed to endurantism, which is the view that an individualis wholly present at every moment of its existence).

[1]

The use of "endure" and "perdure" todistinguish two ways in which an ob ject can be thought to persist can be traced to David Kellogg Lewis (1986).However, contemporary debate has demonstrated the difficulties in defining perdurantism (and also endurantism).For instance, the work of TedSider (2001) has suggested that even enduring objects can have temporal parts, and itis more accurate to define perdurantism as being the claim that objects have a temporal part at every instant that theyexist. Zimmerman (1996) has said that this won't work, as there have been many self-professed perdurantists whobelieve that time is 'gunky' and that for every interval of time, there is a sub-interval. Some perdurantists think thismeans there are no instants, since they define these as intervals of time with no subintervals. Currently there is nouniversally acknowledged definition of perdurantism (see also McKinnon (2002) and Merricks (1999)).

Worm theorists and stage theorists

Perdurantists break into two distinct sub-groups, worm theorists, and stage theorists.

Worm theorists

believe that a persisting object is composed of the various temporal parts that it has. So allpersisting objects are four-dimensional 'worms' that stretch across space-time, and that you are mistaken inbelieving that chairs, mountains and people are simply three-dimensional.

Stage theorists

take you to be identical with a particular temporal part at any given time. So, in a manner of speaking, asubject onlyexists for an instantaneous period of time. However there are other temporal parts atother times which that subject is related to in a certain way (Sider talks of 'modal counterpart relations', whilstHawley talks of 'non-Humean relations') such that when someone says that they were a child, or that they willbe an elderly person, these things are true, because they bear a special "identity-like" relation to a temporalpart that is a child (that exists in the past) or a temporal part that is an elderly person(that exists in the future).Stage theorists are sometimes called 'exdurantists'.

Arguments supporting perdurantism

A number of authors have advanced arguments supporting perdurantism, ranging from problems in logic, to theproblem of temporary intrinsics, to the problems of the Ship of Theseus. A survey can be found in Sider (2001).

Notable perdurantists

•Yuri V. Balashov who has produced a large amount of literature concerning perdurantism and special relativity.(Not to be confused with Yuri S. Balashov)•Jonathan Edwards•Leonard Goodman•Katherine Hawley•Mark Heller•Heraclitus of Ephesus•Hud Hudson•David Lewis argued perdurance theory was necessary for time travel•Orlando Patterson•Robin Le Poidevin•Ted Sider•J.J.C. Smart

Perdurantism90•W.V. Quine•Alfred North Whitehead

Notes

[1]Temporal parts (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/temporal-parts/) - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

References

•Temporal parts (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/temporal-parts/) - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy•Lewis, D.K. 1986.

On the Plurality of Worlds

Oxford: Blackwell•McKinnon, N. 2002. "The Endurance/Perdurance Distinction",

The Australasian Journal of Philosophy

80:3p. 288-306.•Merricks, T. 1999. "Persistence, Parts and Presentism",

Noûs

33 p. 421-38.•Sider, T. 2001.

Four-Dimensionalism

Oxford: Clarendon Press.•Zimmerman, D. 1996. "Persistence and Presentism",

Philosophical Papers

25: 2.

Phenomenalism

is the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptualphenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in space. Inparticular, phenomenalism reduces talk about physical objects in the external world to talk about

bundles of sense-data

.

History

Phenomenalismis a radical form of empiricism and, hence, its roots as an ontological view of the nature of existencecan be traced back to George Berkeley and his subjective idealism, which David Hume further elaborated.

[1]

JohnStuart Mill had a theory of perception which is commonly referred to as classical phenomenalism. This differs fromBerkeley's idealism in its account of how objects continue to exist when no one is perceiving them. Berkeley claimedthat an omniscient God perceived all objects and that this was what kept them in existence, whereas Mill claimedthat permanent possibilities of experience were sufficient for an object's existence. These permanent possibilitiescould be analysed into counterfactual conditionals, such as "if I were to have

y

-type sensations, then I would alsohave

x

-type sensations".As an epistemological theory about the possibility of knowledge of objects in the external world, however, it isprobable that the most easily understandable formulation of phenomenalism is to be found in the

transcendentalaesthetics

of Immanuel Kant. According to Kant, space and time, which are the

a priori

forms and preconditions of all sensory experience, "refer to objects only to the extent that these are considered as phenomena, but do notrepresent the things in themselves". While Kant insisted that knowledge is limited to phenomena, he never denied orexcluded the existence of objects which were not knowable by way of experience, the things-in-themselves ornoumena, though he never proved them.Kant's "epistemological phenomenalism", as it has been called, is therefore quite distinct from Berkeley's earlierontological version. In Berkeley's view, the so-called "things-in-themselves" do not exist except as subjectivelyperceived bundles of sensations which are guaranteed consistency and permanence because they are constantlyperceived by the mind of God. Hence, while Berkeley holds that objects are merely bundles of sensations (seebundle theory), Kant holds (unlike other bundle theorists) that objects do not cease to exist when they are no longerperceived by some merely

human

subject or mind.

Phenomenalism91In the late 19th century, an even more extreme form of phenomenalism was formulated by Ernst Mach, laterdeveloped and refined by Russell, Ayer and the logical positivists. Mach rejected the existence of God and alsodenied that phenomena were data experienced by the mind or consciousness of subjects. Instead, Mach held sensoryphenomena to be "pure data" whose existence was to be considered anterior to any arbitrary distinction betweenmental and physical categories of phenomena. In this way, it was Mach who formulated the key thesis of phenomenalism, which separates it from bundle theories of objects: objects are

logical constructions

out of sense-data or ideas; whereas according to bundle theories, objects are made up of sets, or bundles, of

actual

ideas orperceptions. That is, according to bundle theory, to say that the pear before me exists is simply to say that certainproperties (greenness, hardness, etc.) are being perceived at this moment. When these characteristics are no longerperceived or experienced by anyone, then the object (pear, in this case) no longer exists. Phenomenalism asformulated by Mach, in contrast, is the view that objects are

logical constructions

out of perceptual properties. Onthis view, to say there is a table in the other room when there is no one in that room to perceive it, is to say that

if

there were someone in that room,

then

that person would perceive the table. It is not the

actual

perception thatcounts, but the conditional

possibility

of perceiving.Logical positivism, a movement begun as a small circle which grew around the philosopher Moritz Schlick inVienna, inspired many philosophers in the English speaking world from the 1930s through the 1950s. Importantinfluences on their brand of empiricism included Ernst Mach

—

himself holding the Chair of Inductive Sciences atthe University of Vienna, a position Schlick would later hold

—

and the Cambridge philosopher Bertrand Russell.The idea of the logical positivists, such as A.J. Ayer and Rudolf Carnap, was to formulate the doctrine of phenomenalism in linguistic terms, so as to define references to such entities as physical objects in the external worldout of existence. Sentences which contained terms such as "table" were to be translated into sentences which referredexclusively to either actual or possible sensory experiences.20th century American philosopher Arthur Danto asserted that "a phenomenalist, believ[es] that whatever is finallymeaningful can be expressed in terms of our own [sense] experience.".

[2]

He claimed that "The phenomenalist reallyis committed to the most radical kind of empiricism: For him reference to objects is always finally a reference tosense-experience ... ."

[3]

To the phenomenalist, objects of any kind must be related to experience. "John Stuart Millonce spoke of physical objects as but the 'permanent possibility of experience' and this, by and large, is what thephenomenalist exploits: All we can mean, in talking about physical objects

—

or nonphysical objects, if there areany

—

is what experiences we would have in dealing with them ... ." However, phenomenalism is based on mentaloperations. These operations, themselves, are not known from sense experience. Such non-empirical, non-sensualoperations are the "...nonempirical matters of space, time, and continuity that empiricism in all its forms and despiteits structures seems to require ... ."

[3]

Criticism

Roderick Chisholm criticized the logical positivist version of phenomenalism in 1948.

[4]

C.I. Lewis had previouslysuggested that the physical claim "There is a doorknob in front of me" necessarily entails the sensory conditional "If I should seem to see a doorknob and if I should seem to myself to be initiating a grasping motion, then in allprobability the sensation of contacting a doorknob should follow".

[5]

Chisholm objected that the statement "There isa doorknob..." does not entail the counterfactual statement, for if it were to do so, then it must do so without regard tothe truth or falsity of any other statement; but suppose the following statement was true: "I am paralyzed from theneck down and experience hallucinations such that I seem to see myself moving toward the door". If this were true,Chisholm objected, then there could be a doorknob in front of me, I could seem to myself to see a doorknob, and Icould seem to myself to be performing the correct sort of grasping motion, but with absolutely no chance of having asensation of contacting the doorknob. Likewise, he objected that the statement that "The only book in front of me isred" does not entail the sensory statement "Redness would probably appear to me were I to seem to myself to see abook", because redness is not likely to appear under a blue light-bulb. Some have tried to avoid this problem by

Phenomenalism92extending the conditions in the analysandum: instead of "There is a doorknob in front of me" one could have it that"There is a doorknob, and I am not paralyzed, etc." In response, Chisholm objects that if one complicates theanalysandum, one must also complicate the analysans; in this particular case, that one must analyse in purely sensoryterms what it means not to be paralyzed and so on, with respect to which the same problems would arise leading toan infinite regress.Another common objection to phenomenalism is that in the process of eliminating material objects from languageand replacing them with hypothetical propositions about observers and experiences, it seems to commit us to theexistence of a new class of ontological object altogether: the sensibilia or sense-data which can exist independentlyof experience. Indeed, sense-data have been dismissed by some philosophers of mind, such as Donald Davidson, asmythological entities that are more troublesome than the entities that they were intended to replace.A third common objection in the literature is that phenomenalism, in attempting to convert propositions aboutmaterial objects into hypothetical propositions about sensibilia, postulates the existence of an irreducibly materialobserver in the antecedent of the conditional. In attempting to overcome this, some phenomenalists suggested thatthe first observer could be reduced by constructing a second proposition in terms of a second observer, who actuallyor potentially observes the body of the first observer. A third observer would observe the second and so on. In thismanner we would end up with a "Chinese box series of propositions" of ever decreasing material content ascribed tothe original observer. But if the final result is not the

complete elimination

of the materiality of the first observer,then the translational reductions that are proposed by phenomenalists cannot, even in principle, be carried out.Another criticism is that the phenomenalist can give no satisfactory explanation of the permanent possibilities of experience. The question can be asked, "What are the counterfactual conditionals which ground the existence of objects true in virtue of?" One answer given by phenomenalists is that the conditionals are true in virtue of pastregularities of experience. However, critics object that this answer leads to circularity: first our

actual

experiencewas meant to be explained by the

possibility

of experience, and now the

possibility

of experience is meant to beexplained by our

actual

past experience. A further objection to the phenomenalist answer is that generally speaking,conditionals are not true in virtue of their past occurrences. This is because it seems that a conditional could be trueeven if it never actually obtained, and also past occurrences only confirm

that

a conditional is true, but never make itso.R. Firth formulated another objection in 1950, stemming from perceptual relativity: White wallpaper looks whiteunder white light and red under red light, etc. Any possible course of experience resulting from a possible course of action will apparently underdetermine our surroundings: it would determine, for example, that there is

either

whitewallpaper under red light

or

red wallpaper under white light, and so on. On what basis are we to decide which of thehypotheses is the correct one if we are constrained to rely exclusively on sensibilia?

[6]

References

[1]"Phenomenalism".

Catholic Encyclopedia

. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913.[2]Danto, Arthur,

Nietzsche as Philosopher

, Ch. 3, § VI, Macmillan, 1965;[3]Danto, Arthur,

Connections to the World

, Ch. 27. Harper & Row, 1989, ISBN 0-06-015960-X[4]Chisholm, R. "The Problem of Empiricism",

The Journal of Philosophy

45 (1948): 512-7.[5]C. I. Lewis,

An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation

(LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1946), pp. 240, 248-9.[6]Firth, R. "Radical Empiricism and Perceptual Relativity",

Philosophical Review

. 1950

Bibliography

•

Fenomenismo

in

L'Enciclopedia Garzanti di Filosofia

(eds.) Gianni Vattimo and Gaetano Chiurazzi. ThirdEdition. Garzanti. Milan, 2004. ISBN 88-11-50515-1•Berlin, Isaiah.

The Refutation of Phenomenalism

. The Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library. 2004.•Bolender, John.

Factual Phenomenalism: a Supervenience Theory

, in

SORITES

Issue #09. April 1998. pp. 16

–

31.

Physicalism93

Physicalism

is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physicalproperties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things. The term was coined by Otto Neurathin a series of early twentieth century essays on the subject, in which he wrote:"According to physicalism, the language of physics is the universal language of science and, consequently, anyknowledge can be brought back to the statements on the physical objects."

[1]

In contemporary philosophy, physicalism is most frequently associated with the mind-body problem in philosophy of mind, regarding which physicalism holds that all that has been ascribed to "mind" is more correctly ascribed to"brain" or the activity of the brain. Physicalism is also called "materialism", but the term "physicalism" is preferablebecause it has evolved with the physical sciences to incorporate far more sophisticated notions of physicality thanmatter, for example wave/particle relationships and non-material forces produced by particles. The related positionof methodological naturalism says that philosophy and science should at least operate under the assumptions of natural sciences (and thus physicalism).The ontology of physicalism ultimately includes whatever is described by physics

—

not just matter but energy,space, time, physical forces, structure, physical processes, information, state, etc. Because it claims that onlyphysical things exist, physicalism is generally a form of ontological monism.

Reductive and non-reductive physicalism

Physicalism can be reductive or non-reductive; reductionism is a concept regarding the relationship between theparts of an object and the whole. There are several important concepts relevant to the distinction between the typesof physicalism.

Important concepts

Supervenience

Supervenience is a concept with broad applicability throughout philosophy that has particular importance tophysicalism. It describes the relationship between the fundamental objects of physical reality and those of everydayexperience as well as those of a more abstract social nature. Subtle differences in the interpretation of thesupervenience concept underscore different schools of thought within physicalism.Supervenience can be seen as the relationship between a

higher level

and

lower level

of existence where the higherlevel is dependent on the lower level. One level

supervenes

on another when there can only be a change at thehigher level if there is also a change at the lower level. (e.g., a set of properties

A

supervenes upon a set of properties

B

when there cannot be an

A

difference without a

B

difference). The debate about this notion as regards physicalismis to what extent mental phenomena exist independently of their (supposed) fundamental lowest level - the physical.Supervenience establishes such a relationship between the mental and the physical, that any change in the mental iscaused by a change in the physical. Just as a shadow is dependent upon the position of the object causing it, is themental dependent upon the physical. Physicalism thus implies (through modal realism) that:No two worlds could be identical in every physical respect yet differ in some other respect.The corresponding conclusion about the mental would be as follows:No two beings, or things could be identical in every physical respect yet differ in some mental respect.Another description of supervenience does away with levels altogether and rather pictures reality as a matrix ormosaic, upon which we imply different patterns (the old levels) but emphasising that all patterns are variations of thesame implicit reality.

Artificial intelligence120simply true or false in the way that abstract logic requires. AI research has explored a number of solutions tothis problem.

[52]

The breadth of commonsense knowledgeThe number of atomic facts that the average person knows is astronomical. Research projects that attempt tobuild a complete knowledge base of commonsense knowledge (e.g., Cyc) require enormous amounts of laborious ontological engineering

—

they must be built, by hand, one complicated concept at a time.

[53]

Amajor goal is to have the computer understand enough concepts to be able to learn by reading from sourceslike the internet, and thus be able to add to its own ontology.The subsymbolic form of some commonsense knowledgeMuch of what people know is not represented as "facts" or "statements" that they could express verbally. Forexample, a chess master will avoid a particular chess position because it "feels too exposed"

[54]

or an art criticcan take one look at a statue and instantly realize that it is a fake.

[55]

These are intuitions or tendencies that arerepresented in the brain non-consciously and sub-symbolically.

[56]

Knowledge like this informs, supports andprovides a context for symbolic, conscious knowledge. As with the related problem of sub-symbolicreasoning, it is hoped that situated AI or computational intelligence will provide ways to represent this kind of knowledge.

[56]

Planning

A hierarchical control system is a form of controlsystem in which a set of devices and governingsoftware is arranged in a hierarchy.

Intelligent agents must be able to set goals and achieve them.

[57]

Theyneed a way to visualize the future (they must have a representation of the state of the world and be able to make predictions about how theiractions will change it) and be able to make choices that maximize theutility (or "value") of the available choices.

[58]

In classical planning problems, the agent can assume that it is the onlything acting on the world and it can be certain what the consequencesof its actions may be.

[59]

However, if this is not true, it mustperiodically check if the world matches its predictions and it mustchange its plan as this becomes necessary, requiring the agent to reasonunder uncertainty.

[60]

Multi-agent planning uses the cooperation and competition of manyagents to achieve a given goal. Emergent behavior such as this is usedby evolutionary algorithms and swarm intelligence.

[61]

Learning

Machine learning

[62]

has been central to AI research from the beginning.

[63]

In 1956, at the original Dartmouth AIsummer conference, Ray Solomonoff wrote a report on unsupervised probabilistic machine learning: "An InductiveInference Machine".

[64]

Unsupervised learning is the ability to find patterns in a stream of input. Supervised learningincludes both classification and numerical regression. Classification is used to determine what category somethingbelongs in, after seeing a number of examples of things from several categories. Regression is the attempt to producea function that describes the relationship between inputs and outputs and predicts how the outputs should change asthe inputs change. In reinforcement learning

[65]

the agent is rewarded for good responses and punished for bad ones.These can be analyzed in terms of decision theory, using concepts like utility. The mathematical analysis of machinelearning algorithms and their performance is a branch of theoretical computer science known as computationallearning theory.

[66]

Artificial intelligence121

Natural language processing

A parse tree represents the syntactic structure of asentence according to some formal grammar.

Natural language processing

[67]

gives machines the ability to read andunderstand the languages that humans speak. Many researchers hopethat a sufficiently powerful natural language processing system wouldbe able to acquire knowledge on its own, by reading the existing textavailable over the internet. Some straightforward applications of natural language processing include information retrieval (or textmining) and machine translation.

[68]

Motion and manipulation

The field of robotics

[69]

is closely related to AI. Intelligence is requiredfor robots to be able to handle such tasks as object manipulation

[70]

andnavigation, with sub-problems of localization (knowing where youare), mapping (learning what is around you) and motion planning(figuring out how to get there).

[71]

Perception

Machine perception

[72]

is the ability to use input from sensors (such as cameras, microphones, sonar and others moreexotic) to deduce aspects of the world. Computer vision

[73]

is the ability to analyze visual input. A few selectedsubproblems are speech recognition,

[74]

facial recognition and object recognition.

[75]

Social intelligence

Kismet, a robot with rudimentary social skills

Emotion and social skills

[76]

play two roles for an intelligent agent.First, it must be able to predict the actions of others, by understandingtheir motives and emotional states. (This involves elements of gametheory, decision theory, as well as the ability to model human emotionsand the perceptual skills to detect emotions.) Also, for goodhuman-computer interaction, an intelligent machine needs to

display

emotions. At the very least it must appear polite and sensitive to thehumans it interacts with. At best, it should have normal emotions itself.

Creativity

A sub-field of AI addresses creativity both theoretically (from a philosophical and psychological perspective) andpractically (via specific implementations of systems that generate outputs that can be considered creative, or systemsthat identify and assess creativity). A related area of computational research is Artificial intuition and Artificialimagination.

Artificial intelligence122

General intelligence

Most researchers hope that their work will eventually be incorporated into a machine with

general

intelligence(known as strong AI), combining all the skills above and exceeding human abilities at most or all of them.

[13]

A fewbelieve that anthropomorphic features like artificial consciousness or an artificial brain may be required for such aproject.

[77]

[78]

Many of the problems above are considered AI-complete: to solve one problem, you must solve them all. Forexample, even a straightforward, specific task like machine translation requires that the machine follow the author'sargument (reason), know what is being talked about (knowledge), and faithfully reproduce the author's intention(social intelligence). Machine translation, therefore, is believed to be AI-complete: it may require strong AI to bedone as well as humans can do it.

[79]

Approaches

There is no established unifying theory or paradigm that guides AI research. Researchers disagree about many issues.

[80]

A few of the most long standing questions that have remained unanswered are these: should artificialintelligence simulate natural intelligence bystudying psychology or neurology? Or is human biology as irrelevant toAI research as bird biology is to aeronautical engineering?

[81]

Can intelligent behavior be described using simple,elegant principles (such as logic or optimization)? Or does it necessarily require solving a large number of completely unrelated problems?

[82]

Can intelligence be reproduced using high-level symbols, similar to words andideas? Or does it require "sub-symbolic" processing?

[83]

John Haugeland, who coined the term GOFAI (GoodOld-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence), also proposed that AI should more properly be referred to as syntheticintelligence,

[84]

a term which has since been adopted by some non-GOFAI researchers.

[85]

[86]

Cybernetics and brain simulation

There is currently no consensus on how closelythe brain should be simulated.

In the 1940s and 1950s, a number of researchers explored theconnection between neurology, information theory, and cybernetics.Some of them built machines that used electronic networks to exhibitrudimentary intelligence, such as W. Grey Walter's turtles and theJohns Hopkins Beast. Many of these researchers gathered for meetingsof the Teleological Society at Princeton University and the Ratio Clubin England.

[21]

By 1960, this approach was largely abandoned,although elements of it would be revived in the 1980s.

Symbolic

When access to digital computers became possible in the middle1950s, AI research began to explore the possibility that humanintelligence could be reduced to symbol manipulation. The researchwas centered in three institutions: CMU, Stanford and MIT, and each one developed its own style of research. JohnHaugeland named these approaches to AI "good old fashioned AI" or "GOFAI".

[87]

Cognitive simulationEconomist Herbert Simon and Allen Newell studied human problem-solving skills and attempted to formalizethem, and their work laid the foundations of the field of artificial intelligence, as well as cognitive science,operations research and management science. Their research team used the results of psychologicalexperiments to develop programs that simulated the techniques that people used to solve problems. Thistradition, centered at Carnegie Mellon University would eventually culminate in the development of the Soararchitecture in the middle 80s.

[88]

[89]

Artificial intelligence123Logic-basedUnlike Newell and Simon, John McCarthy felt that machines did not need to simulate human thought, butshould instead try to find the essence of abstract reasoning and problem solving, regardless of whether peopleused the same algorithms.

[81]

His laboratory at Stanford (SAIL) focused on using formal logic to solve a widevariety of problems, including knowledge representation, planning and learning.

[90]

Logic was also focus of the work at the University of Edinburgh and elsewhere in Europe which led to the development of theprogramming language Prolog and the science of logic programming.

[91]

"Anti-logic" or "scruffy"Researchers at MIT (such as Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert)

[92]

found that solving difficult problems invision and natural language processing required ad-hoc solutions

–

they argued that there was no simple andgeneral principle (like logic) that would capture all the aspects of intelligent behavior. Roger Schank describedtheir "anti-logic" approaches as "scruffy" (as opposed to the "neat" paradigms at CMU and Stanford).

[82]

Commonsense knowledge bases (such as Doug Lenat's Cyc) are an example of "scruffy" AI, since they mustbe built by hand, one complicated concept at a time.

[93]

Knowledge-basedWhen computers with large memories became available around 1970, researchers from all three traditionsbegan to build knowledge into AI applications.

[94]

This "knowledge revolution" led to the development anddeployment of expert systems (introduced by Edward Feigenbaum), the first truly successful form of AIsoftware.

[31]

The knowledge revolution was also driven by the realization that enormous amounts of knowledge would be required by many simple AI applications.

Sub-symbolic

During the 1960s, symbolic approaches had achieved great success at simulating high-level thinking in smalldemonstration programs. Approaches based on cybernetics or neural networks were abandoned or pushed into thebackground.

[95]

By the 1980s, however, progress in symbolic AI seemed to stall and many believed that symbolicsystems would never be able to imitate all the processes of human cognition, especially perception, robotics, learningand pattern recognition. A number of researchers began to look into "sub-symbolic" approaches to specific AIproblems.

[83]

Bottom-up, embodied, situated, behavior-based or nouvelle AIResearchers from the related field of robotics, such as Rodney Brooks, rejected symbolic AI and focused onthe basic engineering problems that would allow robots to move and survive.

[96]

Their work revived thenon-symbolic viewpoint of the early cybernetics researchers of the 50s and reintroduced the use of controltheory in AI. This coincided with the development of the embodied mind thesis in the related field of cognitivescience: the idea that aspects of the body (such as movement, perception and visualization) are required forhigher intelligence.Computational IntelligenceInterest in neural networks and "connectionism" was revived by David Rumelhart and others in the middle1980s.

[97]

These and other sub-symbolic approaches, such as fuzzy systems and evolutionary computation, arenow studied collectively by the emerging discipline of computational intelligence.

[98]

Artificial intelligence124

Statistical

In the 1990s, AI researchers developed sophisticated mathematical tools to solve specific subproblems. These toolsare truly scientific, in the sense that their results are both measurable and verifiable, and they have been responsiblefor many of AI's recent successes. The shared mathematical language has also permitted a high level of collaborationwith more established fields (like mathematics, economics or operations research). Stuart Russell and Peter Norvigdescribe this movement as nothing less than a "revolution" and "the victory of the neats."

[34]

Critiques argue thatthese techniques are too focussed on particular problems and have failed to address the long term goal of generalintelligence.

Integrating the approaches

Intelligent agent paradigmAn intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environmentand takes actions which maximize its chancesof success. The simplest intelligent agentsareprograms thatsolve specific problems. More complicated agents include human beings and organizations of human beings (such as firms). The paradigm gives researcherslicense to study isolated problems and find solutions that are both verifiable and useful, without agreeing onone single approach. An agent that solves a specific problem can use any approach that works

—

some agentsare symbolic and logical, some are sub-symbolic neural networks and others may use new approaches. Theparadigm also gives researchers a common language to communicate with other fields

—

such as decisiontheory and economics

—

that also use concepts of abstract agents. The intelligent agent paradigm becamewidely accepted during the 1990s.

[3]

Agent architectures and cognitive architecturesResearchers have designed systems to build intelligent systems out of interacting intelligent agents in amulti-agent system.

[99]

A system with both symbolic and sub-symbolic components is a hybrid intelligentsystem, and the study of such systems is artificial intelligence systems integration. A hierarchical controlsystem provides a bridge between sub-symbolic AI at its lowest, reactive levels and traditional symbolic AI atits highest levels, where relaxed time constraints permit planning and world modelling.

[100]

Rodney Brooks'subsumption architecture was an early proposal for such a hierarchical system.

[101]

Tools

In the course of 50 years of research, AI has developed a large number of tools to solve the most difficult problemsin computer science. A few of the most general of these methods are discussed below.

Search and optimization

Many problems in AI can be solved in theory by intelligently searching through many possible solutions:

[102]

Reasoning can be reduced to performing a search. For example, logical proof can be viewed as searching for a paththat leads from premises to conclusions, where each step is the application of an inference rule.

[103]

Planningalgorithms search through trees of goals and subgoals, attempting to find a path to a target goal, a process calledmeans-ends analysis.

[104]

Robotics algorithms for moving limbs and grasping objects use local searches inconfiguration space.

[70]

Many learning algorithms use search algorithms based on optimization.Simple exhaustive searches

[105]

are rarely sufficient for most real world problems: the search space (the number of places to search) quickly grows to astronomical numbers. The result is a search that is too slow or never completes.The solution, for many problems, is to use "heuristics" or "rules of thumb" that eliminate choices that are unlikely tolead to the goal (called "pruning the search tree"). Heuristics supply the program with a "best guess" for the path onwhich the solution lies.

[106]

Artificial intelligence125A very different kind of search came to prominence in the 1990s, based on the mathematical theory of optimization.For many problems, it is possible to begin the search with some form of a guess and then refine the guessincrementally until no more refinements can be made. These algorithms can be visualized as blind hill climbing: webegin the search at a random point on the landscape, and then, by jumps or steps, we keep moving our guess uphill,until we reach the top. Other optimization algorithms are simulated annealing, beam search and randomoptimization.

[107]

Evolutionary computation uses a form of optimization search. For example, they may begin with a population of organisms (the guesses) and then allow them to mutate and recombine, selecting only the fittest to survive eachgeneration (refining the guesses). Forms of evolutionary computation include swarm intelligence algorithms (such asant colony or particle swarm optimization)

[108]

and evolutionary algorithms (such as genetic algorithms and geneticprogramming).

[109]

Logic

[110]

is used for knowledge representation and problem solving, but it can be applied to other problems as well.For example, the satplan algorithm uses logic for planning

[111]

and inductive logic programming is a method forlearning.

[112]

Several different forms of logic are used inAI research. Propositional or sentential logic

[113]

is thelogic of statements which can be true or false. First-order logic

[114]

also allows the use of quantifiers and predicates, and canexpress facts about objects, their properties, and their relations with each other. Fuzzy logic,

[115]

is a version of first-order logic which allows the truth of a statement to be represented as a value between 0 and 1, rather thansimply True (1) or False (0). Fuzzy systems can be used for uncertain reasoning and have been widely used inmodern industrial and consumer product control systems. Subjective logic

[116]

models uncertainty in a different andmore explicit manner than fuzzy-logic: a given binomial opinion satisfies belief + disbelief + uncertainty = 1 withina Beta distribution. By this method, ignorance can be distinguished from probabilistic statements that an agent makeswith high confidence.Default logics, non-monotonic logics and circumscription

[52]

are forms of logic designed to help with defaultreasoning and the qualification problem. Several extensions of logic have been designed to handle specific domainsof knowledge, such as: description logics;

[46]

situation calculus, event calculus and fluent calculus (for representingevents and time);

[47]

causal calculus;

[48]

belief calculus; and modal logics.

[49]

Probabilistic methods for uncertain reasoning

Many problems in AI (in reasoning, planning, learning, perception and robotics) require the agent to operate withincomplete or uncertain information. AI researchers have devised a number of powerful tools to solve theseproblems using methods from probability theory and economics.

[117]

Bayesian networks

[118]

are a very general tool that can be used for a large number of problems: reasoning (using theBayesian inference algorithm),

[119]

learning (using the expectation-maximization algorithm),

[120]

planning (usingdecision networks)

[121]

and perception (using dynamic Bayesian networks).

[122]

Probabilistic algorithms can also beused for filtering, prediction, smoothing and finding explanations for streams of data, helping perception systems toanalyze processes that occur over time (e.g., hidden Markov models or Kalman filters).

[122]

A key concept from the science of economics is "utility": a measure of how valuable something is to an intelligentagent. Precise mathematical tools have been developed that analyze how an agent can make choices and plan, usingdecision theory, decision analysis,

[123]

information value theory.

[58]

These tools include models such as Markovdecision processes,

[124]

dynamic decision networks,

[122]

game theory and mechanism design.

[125]

Artificial intelligence126

Classifiers and statistical learning methods

The simplest AI applications can be divided into two types: classifiers ("if shiny then diamond") and controllers ("if shiny then pick up"). Controllers do however also classify conditions before inferring actions, and thereforeclassification forms a central part of many AI systems. Classifiers are functions that use pattern matching todetermine a closest match. They can be tuned according to examples, making them very attractive for use in AI.These examples are known as observations or patterns. In supervised learning, each pattern belongs to a certainpredefined class. A class can be seen as a decision that has to be made. All the observations combined with theirclass labels are known as a data set. When a new observation is received, that observation is classified based onprevious experience.

[126]

A classifier can be trained in various ways; there are many statistical and machine learning approaches. The mostwidely used classifiers are the neural network,

[127]

kernel methods such as the support vector machine,

[128]

k-nearestneighbor algorithm,

[129]

Gaussian mixture model,

[130]

naive Bayes classifier,

[131]

and decision tree.

[132]

Theperformance of these classifiers have been compared over a wide range of tasks. Classifier performance dependsgreatly on the characteristics of the data to be classified. There is no single classifier that works best on all givenproblems; this is also referred to as the "no free lunch" theorem. Determining a suitable classifier for a given problemis still more an art than science.

[133]

Neural networks

A neural network is an interconnected group of nodes, akin to the vast network of neurons in thehuman brain.

The study of artificial neural networks

[127]

began in the decade beforethe field AI research was founded, in the work of Walter Pitts andWarren McCullough. Other important early researchers were FrankRosenblatt, who invented the perceptron and Paul Werbos whodeveloped the backpropagation algorithm.

[134]

The main categories of networks are acyclic or feedforward neuralnetworks (where the signal passes in only one direction) and recurrentneural networks (which allow feedback). Among the most popularfeedforward networks are perceptrons, multi-layer perceptrons andradial basis networks.

[135]

Among recurrent networks, the most famousis the Hopfield net, a form of attractor network, which was firstdescribed by John Hopfield in 1982.

[136]

Neural networks can beapplied to the problem of intelligent control (for robotics) or learning,using such techniques as Hebbian learning and competitivelearning.

[137]

Hierarchical temporal memory is an approach that models some of the structural and algorithmic properties of theneocortex.

[138]

Artificial intelligence127

Control theory

Control theory, the grandchild of cybernetics, has many important applications, especially in robotics.

[139]

Languages

AI researchers have developed several specialized languages for AI research, including Lisp

[140]

and Prolog.

[141]

Evaluating progress

In 1950, Alan Turing proposed a general procedure to test the intelligence of an agent now known as the Turing test.This procedure allows almost all the major problems of artificial intelligence to be tested. However, it is a verydifficult challenge and at present all agents fail.

[142]

Artificial intelligence can also be evaluated on specific problems such as small problems in chemistry, hand-writingrecognition and game-playing. Such tests have been termed subject matter expert Turing tests. Smaller problemsprovide more achievable goals and there are an ever-increasing number of positive results.

[143]

The broad classes of outcome for an AI test are: (1) Optimal: it is not possible to perform better. (2) Strongsuper-human: performs better than all humans. (3) Super-human: performs better than most humans. (4) Sub-human:performs worse than most humans. For example, performance at draughts is optimal,

[144]

performance at chess issuper-human and nearing strong super-human (see Computer chess#Computers versus humans) and performance atmany everyday tasks (such as recognizing a face or crossing a room without bumping into something) is sub-human.A quite different approach measures machine intelligence through tests which are developed from

mathematical

definitions of intelligence. Examples of these kinds of tests start in the late nineties devising intelligence tests usingnotions from Kolmogorov complexity and data compression.

[145]

Two major advantages of mathematical definitionsare their applicability to nonhuman intelligences and their absence of a requirement for human testers.

Applications

An automated online assistant providingcustomer service on a web page - one of manyapplications of artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence techniques are pervasive and are too numerous tolist. Frequently, when a technique reaches mainstream use, it is nolonger considered artificial intelligence; this phenomenon is describedas the AI effect.

[146]

Competitions and prizes

There are a number of competitions and prizes to promote research inartificial intelligence. The main areas promoted are: general machineintelligence, conversational behavior, data-mining, driverless cars,robot soccer and games.

Platforms

A platform (or "computing platform") is defined as "some sort of hardware architecture or software framework (including applicationframeworks), that allows software to run." As Rodney Brooks

[147]

pointed out many years ago, it is not just the artificial intelligencesoftware that defines the AI features of the platform, but rather theactual platform itself that affects the AI that results, i.e., we need to be working out AI problems on real-worldplatforms rather than in isolation.

Artificial intelligence128A wide variety of platforms has allowed different aspects of AI to develop, ranging from expert systems, albeitPC-based but still an entire real-world system, to various robot platforms such as the widely available Roomba withopen interface.

[148]

Philosophy

Artificial intelligence, by claiming to be able to recreate the capabilities of the human mind, is both a challenge andan inspiration for philosophy. Are there limits to how intelligent machines can be? Is there an essential differencebetween human intelligence and artificial intelligence? Can a machine have a mind and consciousness? A few of themost influential answers to these questions are given below.

[149]

Turing's "polite convention": We need not decide if a machine can "think"; we need only decide if a machine can actas intelligently as a human being. This approach to the philosophical problems associated with artificial intelligenceforms the basis of the Turing test.

[142]

The Dartmouth proposal: "Every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can be so precisely describedthat a machine can be made to simulate it." This conjecture was printed in the proposal for the DartmouthConference of 1956, and represents the position of most working AI researchers.

[150]

Newell and Simon's physical symbol system hypothesis: "A physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficientmeans of general intelligent action." Newell and Simon argue that intelligences consist of formal operations onsymbols.

[151]

Hubert Dreyfus argued that, on the contrary, human expertise depends on unconscious instinct ratherthan conscious symbol manipulation and on having a "feel" for the situation rather than explicit symbolicknowledge. (See Dreyfus' critique of AI.)

[152]

[153]

Gödel's incompleteness theorem: A formal system (such as a computer program) cannot prove all truestatements.

[154]

Roger Penrose is among those who claim that Gödel's theorem limits what machines can do. (See

The Emperor's New Mind

.)

[155]

Searle's strong AI hypothesis: "The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs wouldthereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds."

[156]

John Searle counters this assertionwith his Chinese room argument, which asks us to look

inside

the computer and try to find where the "mind" mightbe.

[157]

The artificial brain argument: The brain can be simulated. Hans Moravec, Ray Kurzweil and others have argued thatit is technologically feasible to copy the brain directly into hardware and software, and that such a simulation will beessentially identical to the original.

[78]

Predictions and ethics

Artificial Intelligence is a common topic in both science fiction and projections about the future of technology andsociety. The existence of an artificial intelligence that rivals human intelligence raises difficult ethical issues, and thepotential power of the technology inspires both hopes and fears.In fiction, Artificial Intelligence has appeared fulfilling many roles, including a servant (R2D2 in

Star Wars

), a lawenforcer (K.I.T.T. "Knight Rider"), a comrade (Lt. Commander Data in

Star Trek: The Next Generation

), aconqueror/overlord (

The Matrix

), a dictator (

With Folded Hands

), a benevolent provider/de facto ruler (

The Culture

),an assassin (

Terminator

), a sentient race (

Battlestar Galactica

/Transformers), an extension to human abilities (

Ghost in the Shell

) and the savior of the human race (R. Daneel Olivaw in the

Asimov's Robot Series

).Mary Shelley's

Frankenstein

considers a key issue in the ethics of artificial intelligence: if a machine can be createdthat has intelligence, could it also

feel

? If it can feel, does it have the same rights as a human? The idea also appearsin modern science fiction, including the films

I Robot

,

Blade Runner

and

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

, in whichhumanoid machines have the ability to feel human emotions. This issue, now known as "robot rights", is currentlybeing considered by, for example, California's Institute for the Future, although many critics believe that the

Artificial intelligence129discussion is premature.

[158]

The subject is profoundly discussed in the 2010 documentary film

Plug & Pray

.

[159]

Martin Ford, author of

The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future

,

[160]

and others argue that specialized artificial intelligence applications, robotics and other forms of automation will ultimately result in significant unemployment as machines begin to match and exceed the capabilityof workers to perform most routine and repetitive jobs. Ford predicts that many knowledge-based occupations

—

andin particular entry level jobs

—

will be increasingly susceptible to automation via expert systems, machinelearning

[161]

and other AI-enhanced applications. AI-based applications may also be used to amplify the capabilitiesof low-wage offshore workers, making it more feasible to outsource knowledge work.

[162]

Joseph Weizenbaum wrote that AI applications can not, by definition, successfully simulate genuine human empathyand that the use of AI technology in fields such as customer service or psychotherapy

[163]

was deeply misguided.Weizenbaum was also bothered that AI researchers (and some philosophers) were willing to view the human mind asnothing more than a computer program (a position now known as computationalism). To Weizenbaum these pointssuggest that AI research devalues human life.

[164]

Many futurists believe that artificial intelligence will ultimately transcend the limits of progress. Ray Kurzweil hasused Moore's law (which describes the relentless exponential improvement in digital technology) to calculate thatdesktop computers will have the same processing power as human brains by the year 2029. He also predicts that by2045 artificial intelligence will reach a point where it is able to improve

itself

at a rate that far exceeds anythingconceivable in the past, a scenario that science fiction writer Vernor Vinge named the "singularity".

[165]

Robot designer Hans Moravec, cyberneticist Kevin Warwick and inventor Ray Kurzweil have predicted that humansand machines will merge in the future into cyborgs that are more capable and powerful than either.

[166]

This idea,called transhumanism, which has roots in Aldous Huxley and Robert Ettinger, has been illustrated in fiction as well,for example in the manga

Ghost in the Shell

and the science-fiction series

Dune

.Edward Fredkin argues that "artificial intelligence is the next stage in evolution," an idea first proposed by SamuelButler's "Darwin among the Machines" (1863), and expanded upon by George Dyson in his book of the same namein 1998.

[167]

Pamela McCorduck writes that all these scenarios are expressions of the ancient human desire to, as she calls it,"forge the gods".

[7]

References

Notes

[1]TOPIO:•"A Ping-Pong-Playing Terminator" (http://www.popsci.

com/technology/article/2010-02/ping-pong-playing-terminator). PopularScience. .•"Best robot 2009" (http://www.

gadgetrivia.com/8164-best_robot_international_robot_exhibition). www.gadgetrivia.com. .[2]Definition of AI as the study of intelligent agents:•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, p. 1 (http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~poole/ci/ch1.

pdf), which provides the version that is used in thisarticle. Note that they use the term "computational intelligence" as a synonym for artificial intelligence.•Russell & Norvig (2003) (who prefer the term "rational agent") and write "The whole-agent view is now widely accepted in the field"(Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 55).•Nilsson 1998[3]The intelligent agent paradigm:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 27, 32

–

58, 968

–

972•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 7

–

21•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 235

–

240The definition used in this article, in terms of goals, actions, perception and environment, is due to Russell & Norvig (2003). Other definitionsalso include knowledge and learning as additional criteria.[4]Although there is some controversy on this point (see Crevier (1993, p. 50)), McCarthy states unequivocally "I came up with the term" in ac|net interview. (Skillings 2006)

Artificial intelligence130

[5]McCarthy's definition of AI:•McCarthy 2007[6]See the Dartmouth proposal, under Philosophy, below.[7]This is a central idea of Pamela McCorduck's

Machines That Think

. She writes: "I like to think of artificial intelligence as the scientificapotheosis of a venerable cultural tradition." (McCorduck 2004, p. 34) "Artificial intelligence in one form or another is an idea that haspervaded Western intellectual history, a dream in urgent need of being realized." (McCorduck 2004, p. xviii) "Our history is full of attempts

—

nutty, eerie, comical, earnest, legendary and real

—

to make artificial intelligences, to reproduce what is the essential us

—

bypassingthe ordinary means. Back and forth between myth and reality, our imaginations supplying what our workshops couldn't, we have engaged for along time in this odd form of self-reproduction." (McCorduck 2004, p. 3) She traces the desire back to its Hellenistic roots and calls it the urgeto "forge the Gods." (McCorduck 2004, pp. 340

–

400)[8]The optimism referred to includes the predictions of early AI researchers (see optimism in the history of AI) as well as the ideas of moderntranshumanists such as Ray Kurzweil.[9]The "setbacks" referred to include the ALPAC report of 1966, the abandonment of perceptrons in 1970, the Lighthill Report of 1973 and thecollapse of the lisp machine market in 1987.[10]AI applications widely used behind the scenes:•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 28•Kurzweil 2005, p. 265•NRC 1999, pp. 216

–

222[11]Pamela McCorduck (2004, pp. 424) writes of "the rough shattering of AI in subfields

—

vision, natural language, decision theory, geneticalgorithms, robotics ... and these with own sub-subfield

—

that would hardly have anything to say to each other."[12]This list of intelligent traits is based on the topics covered by the major AI textbooks, including:•Russell & Norvig 2003•Luger & Stubblefield 2004•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998•Nilsson 1998[13]General intelligence (strong AI) is discussed in popular introductions to AI:•Kurzweil 1999 and Kurzweil 2005[14]AI in myth:•McCorduck 2004, pp. 4

–

5•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 939[15]Cult images as artificial intelligence:•Crevier (1993, p. 1) (statue of Amun)•McCorduck (2004, pp. 6

–

9)These were the first machines to be believed to have true intelligence and consciousness. Hermes Trismegistus expressed the common belief that with these statues, craftsman had reproduced "the true nature of the gods", their

sensus

and

spiritus

. McCorduck makes the connectionbetween sacred automatons and Mosaic law (developed around the same time), which expressly forbids the worship of robots (McCorduck2004, pp. 6

–

9)[16]Humanoid automata:Yan Shi:•Needham 1986, p. 53Hero of Alexandria:•McCorduck 2004, p. 6Al-Jazari:•"A Thirteenth Century Programmable Robot" (http://www.shef.ac.uk/marcoms/eview/articles58/robot.

html). Shef.ac.uk. . Retrieved2009-04-25.Wolfgang von Kempelen:•McCorduck 2004, p. 17[17]Artificial beings:Jābir ibn Hayyān's Takwin:•O'Connor, Kathleen Malone (1994).

The alchemical creation of life (takwin) and other concepts of Genesis in medieval Islam

(http:// repository.

upenn.

edu/dissertations/AAI9503804). University of Pennsylvania. . Retrieved 2007-01-10.Judah Loew's Golem:•McCorduck 2004, pp. 15

–

16•Buchanan 2005, p. 50Paracelsus' Homunculus:•McCorduck 2004, pp. 13

–

14

Artificial intelligence131

[18]AI in early science fiction.•McCorduck 2004, pp. 17

–

25[19]This insight, that digital computers can simulate any process of formal reasoning, is known as the Church

–

Turing thesis.[20]Formal reasoning:•Berlinski, David (2000).

The Advent of the Algorithm

. Harcourt Books. ISBN 0-15-601391-6. OCLC 46890682.[21]AI's immediate precursors:•McCorduck 2004, pp. 51

–

107•Crevier 1993, pp. 27

–

32•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 15, 940•Moravec 1988, p. 3See also Cybernetics and early neural networks (in History of artificial intelligence). Among the researchers who laid the foundations of AIwere Alan Turing, John Von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, Warren McCullough, Walter Pitts and Donald Hebb.[22]Dartmouth conference:•McCorduck 2004, pp. 111

–

136•Crevier 1993, pp. 47

–

49, who writes "the conference is generally recognized as the official birthdate of the new science."•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 17, who call the conference "the birth of artificial intelligence."•NRC 1999, pp. 200

–

201[23]Hegemony of the Dartmouth conference attendees:•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 17, who write "for the next 20 years the field would be dominated by these people and their students."•McCorduck 2004, pp. 129

–

130[24]Russell and Norvig write "it was astonishing whenever a computer did anything kind of smartish." Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 18[25]"Golden years" of AI (successful symbolic reasoning programs 1956-1973):•McCorduck 2004, pp. 243

–

252•Crevier 1993, pp. 52

–

107•Moravec 1988, p. 9•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 18

–

21The programs described are Daniel Bobrow's STUDENT, Newell and Simon's Logic Theorist and Terry Winograd's SHRDLU.[26]DARPA pours money into undirected pure research into AI during the 1960s:•McCorduck 2004, pp. 131•Crevier 1993, pp. 51, 64

–

65•NRC 1999, pp. 204

–

205[27]AI in England:•Howe 1994[28]Optimism of early AI:•Herbert Simon quote: Simon 1965, p. 96 quoted in Crevier 1993, p. 109.•Marvin Minsky quote: Minsky 1967, p. 2 quoted in Crevier 1993, p. 109.[29]See The problems (in History of artificial intelligence)[30]First AI Winter, Mansfield Amendment, Lighthill report•Crevier 1993, pp. 115

–

117•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 22•NRC 1999, pp. 212

–

213•Howe 1994[31]Expert systems:•ACM 1998, I.2.1,•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 22

−

24•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 227

–

331,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 17.4•McCorduck 2004, pp. 327

–

335, 434

–

435•Crevier 1993, pp. 145

–

62, 197

−

203[32]Boom of the 1980s: rise of expert systems, Fifth Generation Project, Alvey, MCC, SCI:•McCorduck 2004, pp. 426

–

441•Crevier 1993, pp. 161

–

162,197

–

203, 211, 240•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 24•NRC 1999, pp. 210

–

211[33]Second AI winter:•McCorduck 2004, pp. 430

–

435

Artificial intelligence132

•Crevier 1993, pp. 209

–

210•NRC 1999, pp. 214

–

216[34]Formal methods are now preferred ("Victory of the neats"):•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 25

–

26•McCorduck 2004, pp. 486

–

487[35]McCorduck 2004, pp. 480

–

483[36]DARPA Grand Challenge

–

home page (http://www.

darpa.mil/grandchallenge/)[37]"Welcome" (http://archive.

darpa.mil/grandchallenge/). Archive.darpa.mil. . Retrieved 2011-10-31.[38]Markoff, John (16 February 2011). "On 'Jeopardy!' Watson Win Is All but Trivial" (http://www.

nytimes.

com/2011/02/17/science/ 17jeopardy-watson.

html).

The New York Times

. .[39]Kinect's AI breakthrough explained (http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligence/ 2176-kinects-ai-breakthrough-explained.

html)[40]Problem solving, puzzle solving, game playing and deduction:•Russell & Norvig 2003, chpt. 3-9,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, chpt. 2,3,7,9,•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, chpt. 3,4,6,8,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 7-12[41]Uncertain reasoning:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 452

–

644,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 345

–

395,•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 333

–

381,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 19[42]Intractability and efficiency and the combinatorial explosion:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 9, 21

–

22[43]Psychological evidence of sub-symbolic reasoning:•Wason & Shapiro (1966) showed that people do poorly on completely abstract problems, but if the problem is restated to allow the use of intuitive social intelligence, performance dramatically improves. (See Wason selection task)•Kahneman, Slovic & Tversky (1982) have shown that people are terrible at elementary problems that involve uncertain reasoning. (See listof cognitive biases for several examples).•Lakoff & Núñez (2000) have controversially argued that even our skills at mathematics depend on knowledge and skills that come from"the body", i.e. sensorimotor and perceptual skills. (See Where Mathematics Comes From)[44]Knowledge representation:•ACM 1998, I.2.4,•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 320

–

363,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 23

–

46, 69

–

81, 169

–

196, 235

–

277, 281

–

298, 319

–

345,•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 227

–

243,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 18[45]Knowledge engineering:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 260

–

266,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 199

–

233,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. ~17.1-17.4[46]Representing categories and relations: Semantic networks, description logics, inheritance (including frames and scripts):•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 349

–

354,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 174

–

177,•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 248

–

258,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 18.3[47]Representing events and time:Situation calculus, event calculus, fluent calculus (including solving the frame problem):•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 328

–

341,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 281

–

298,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 18.2[48]Causal calculus:•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 335

–

337[49]Representing knowledge about knowledge: Belief calculus, modal logics:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 341

–

344,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 275

–

277[50]Ontology:

Artificial intelligence133

•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 320

–

328[51]Qualification problem:•McCarthy & Hayes 1969•Russell & Norvig 2003While McCarthy was primarily concerned with issues in the logical representation of actions, Russell & Norvig 2003 apply the term to themore general issue of default reasoning in the vast network of assumptions underlying all our commonsense knowledge.[52]Default reasoning and default logic, non-monotonic logics, circumscription, closed world assumption, abduction (Poole

et al.

placesabduction under "default reasoning". Luger

et al.

places this under "uncertain reasoning"):•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 354

–

360,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 248

–

256, 323

–

335,•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 335

–

363,•Nilsson 1998, ~18.3.3[53]Breadth of commonsense knowledge:•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 21,•Crevier 1993, pp. 113

–

114,•Moravec 1988, p. 13,•Lenat & Guha 1989 (Introduction)[54]Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1986[55]Gladwell 2005[56]Expert knowledge as embodied intuition:•Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1986 (Hubert Dreyfus is a philosopher and critic of AI who was among the first to argue that most useful humanknowledge was encoded sub-symbolically. See Dreyfus' critique of AI)•Gladwell 2005 (Gladwell's

Blink

is a popular introduction to sub-symbolic reasoning and knowledge.)•Hawkins & Blakeslee 2005 (Hawkins argues that sub-symbolic knowledge should be the primary focus of AI research.)[57]Planning:•ACM 1998, ~I.2.8,•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 375

–

459,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 281

–

316,•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 314

–

329,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 10.1-2, 22[58]Information value theory:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 600

–

604[59]Classical planning:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 375

–

430,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 281

–

315,•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 314

–

329,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 10.1-2, 22[60]Planning and acting in non-deterministic domains: conditional planning, execution monitoring, replanning and continuous planning:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 430

–

449[61]Multi-agent planning and emergent behavior:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 449

–

455[62]Learning:•ACM 1998, I.2.6,•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 649

–

788,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 397

–

438,•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 385

–

542,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 3.3 , 10.3, 17.5, 20[63]Alan Turing discussed the centrality of learning as early as 1950, in his classic paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence. (Turing 1950)[64](pdf scanned copy of the original) (http://world.

std.com/~rjs/indinf56.

pdf) (version published in 1957, An Inductive InferenceMachine," IRE Convention Record, Section on Information Theory, Part 2, pp. 56-62)[65]Reinforcement learning:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 763

–

788•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 442

–

449[66]Computational learning theory:•CITATION IN PROGRESS.[67]Natural language processing:

Artificial intelligence134

•ACM 1998, I.2.7•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 790

–

831•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 91

–

104•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 591

–

632[68]Applications of natural language processing, including information retrieval (i.e. text mining) and machine translation:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 840

–

857,•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 623

–

630[69]Robotics:•ACM 1998, I.2.9,•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 901

–

942,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 443

–

460[70]Moving and configuration space:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 916

–

932[71]Robotic mapping (localization, etc):•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 908

–

915[72]Machine perception:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 537

–

581, 863

–

898•Nilsson 1998, ~chpt. 6[73]Computer vision:•ACM 1998, I.2.10•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 863

–

898•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 6[74]Speech recognition:•ACM 1998, ~I.2.7•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 568

–

578[75]Object recognition:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 885

–

892[76]Emotion and affective computing:•Minsky 2006[77]Gerald Edelman, Igor Aleksander and others have both argued that artificial consciousness is required for strong AI. (Aleksander 1995;Edelman 2007)[78]Artificial brain arguments: AI requires a simulation of the operation of the human brain•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 957•Crevier 1993, pp. 271 and 279A few of the people who make some form of the argument:•Moravec 1988•Kurzweil 2005, p. 262•Hawkins & Blakeslee 2005The most extreme form of this argument (the brain replacement scenario) was put forward by Clark Glymour in the mid-70s and was touchedon by Zenon Pylyshyn and John Searle in 1980.[79]AI complete: Shapiro 1992, p. 9[80]Nils Nilsson writes: "Simply put, there is wide disagreement in the field about what AI is all about" (Nilsson 1983, p. 10).[81]Biological intelligence vs. intelligence in general:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 2

–

3, who make the analogy with aeronautical engineering.•McCorduck 2004, pp. 100

–

101, who writes that there are "two major branches of artificial intelligence: one aimed at producing intelligentbehavior regardless of how it was accomplioshed, and the other aimed at modeling intelligent processes found in nature, particularlyhuman ones."•Kolata 1982, a paper in

Science

, which describes McCathy's indifference to biological models. Kolata quotes McCarthy as writing: "Thisis AI, so we don't care if it's psychologically real" (http://books.google.com/books?id=PEkqAAAAMAAJ&q="we+don't+care+if+it's+psychologically+real"&dq="we+don't+care+if+it's+psychologically+real"&output=html&pgis=1). McCarthy recentlyreiterated his position at the AI@50 conference where he said "Artificial intelligence is not, by definition, simulation of humanintelligence" (Maker 2006).[82]Neats vs. scruffies:•McCorduck 2004, pp. 421

–

424, 486

–

489•Crevier 1993, pp. 168•Nilsson 1983, pp. 10

–

11

Artificial intelligence135

[83]Symbolic vs. sub-symbolic AI:•Nilsson (1998, p. 7), who uses the term "sub-symbolic".[84]Haugeland 1985, p. 255.[85]http://citeseerx.

ist.

psu.

edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.

1.

38.

8384&rep=rep1&type=pdf [86]Pei Wang (2008).

Artificial general intelligence, 2008: proceedings of the First AGI Conference

(http://books.

google.

com/ books?id=a_ZR81Z25z0C&pg=PA63). IOS Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-1-58603-833-5. . Retrieved 31 October 2011.[87]Haugeland 1985, pp. 112

–

117[88]Cognitive simulation, Newell and Simon, AI at CMU (then called Carnegie Tech):•McCorduck 2004, pp. 139

–

179, 245

–

250, 322

–

323 (EPAM)•Crevier 1993, pp. 145

–

149[89]Soar (history):•McCorduck 2004, pp. 450

–

451•Crevier 1993, pp. 258

–

263[90]McCarthy and AI research at SAIL and SRI International:•McCorduck 2004, pp. 251

–

259•Crevier 1993[91]AI research at Edinburgh and in France, birth of Prolog:•Crevier 1993, pp. 193

–

196•Howe 1994[92]AI at MIT under Marvin Minsky in the 1960s :•McCorduck 2004, pp. 259

–

305•Crevier 1993, pp. 83

–

102, 163

–

176•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 19[93]Cyc:•McCorduck 2004, p. 489, who calls it "a determinedly scruffy enterprise"•Crevier 1993, pp. 239

−

243•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 363

−

365•Lenat & Guha 1989[94]Knowledge revolution:•McCorduck 2004, pp. 266

–

276, 298

–

300, 314, 421•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 22

–

23[95]The most dramatic case of sub-symbolic AI being pushed into the background was the devastating critique of perceptrons by Marvin Minskyand Seymour Papert in 1969. See History of AI, AI winter, or Frank Rosenblatt.[96]Embodied approaches to AI:•McCorduck 2004, pp. 454

–

462•Brooks 1990•Moravec 1988[97]Revival of connectionism:•Crevier 1993, pp. 214

–

215•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 25[98]Computational intelligence•IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (http://www.

ieee-cis.

org/)[99]Agent architectures, hybrid intelligent systems:•Russell & Norvig (2003, pp. 27, 932, 970

–

972)•Nilsson (1998, chpt. 25)[100]Hierarchical control system:•Albus, J. S. 4-D/RCS reference model architecture for unmanned ground vehicles. (http://www.

isd.

mel.

nist.

gov/documents/albus/ 4DRCS.

pdf) In G Gerhart, R Gunderson, and C Shoemaker, editors, Proceedings of the SPIE AeroSense Session on Unmanned GroundVehicle Technology, volume 3693, pages 11

—

20[101]Subsumption architecture:•CITATION IN PROGRESS.[102]Search algorithms:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 59

–

189•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 113

–

163•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 79

–

164, 193

–

219

Artificial intelligence136

•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 7-12[103]Forward chaining, backward chaining, Horn clauses, and logical deduction as search:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 217

–

225, 280

–

294•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. ~46

–

52•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 62

–

73•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 4.2, 7.2[104]State space search and planning:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 382

–

387•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 298

–

305•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 10.1-2[105]Uninformed searches (breadth first search, depth first search and general state space search):•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 59

–

93•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 113

–

132•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 79

–

121•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 8[106]Heuristic or informed searches (e.g., greedy best first and A*):•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 94

–

109,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. pp. 132

–

147,•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 133

–

150,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 9[107]Optimization searches:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 110

–

116,120

–

129•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 56

–

163•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 127

–

133[108]Artificial life and society based learning:•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 530

–

541[109]Genetic programming and genetic algorithms:•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 509

–

530,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 4.2.•Holland, John H. (1975).

Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems

. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0262581116.•Koza, John R. (1992).

Genetic Programming

. MIT Press. ISBN 0262111705.•Poli, R., Langdon, W. B., McPhee, N. F. (2008).

A Field Guide to Genetic Programming

. Lulu.com, freely available from http://www.gp-field-guide.

org.

uk/.

 ISBN 978-1-4092-0073-4.[110]Logic:•ACM 1998, ~I.2.3,•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 194

–

310,•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 35

–

77,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 13-16[111]Satplan:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 402

–

407,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 300

–

301,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 21[112]Explanation based learning, relevance based learning, inductive logic programming, case based reasoning:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 678

–

710,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 414

–

416,•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. ~422

–

442,•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 10.3, 17.5[113]Propositional logic:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 204

–

233,•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 45

–

50•Nilsson 1998, chpt. 13[114]First-order logic and features such as equality:•ACM 1998, ~I.2.4,•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 240

–

310,•Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998, pp. 268

–

275,•Luger & Stubblefield 2004, pp. 50

–

62,

Artificial intelligence139

[147]Brooks, R.A., "How to build complete creatures rather than isolated cognitive simulators," in K. VanLehn (ed.), Architectures forIntelligence, pp. 225

–

239, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, 1991.[148]Hacking Roomba » Search Results » atmel (http://hackingroomba.com/?s=atmel)[149]Philosophy of AI. All of these positions in this section are mentioned in standard discussions of the subject, such as:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 947

–

960•Fearn 2007, pp. 38

–

55[150]Dartmouth proposal:•McCarthy et al. 1955 (the original proposal)•Crevier 1993, p. 49 (historical significance)[151]The physical symbol systems hypothesis:•Newell & Simon 1976, p. 116•McCorduck 2004, p. 153•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 18[152]Dreyfus criticized the necessary condition of the physical symbol system hypothesis, which he called the "psychological assumption": "Themind can be viewed as a device operating on bits of information according to formal rules". (Dreyfus 1992, p. 156)[153]Dreyfus' critique of artificial intelligence:•Dreyfus 1972, Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1986•Crevier 1993, pp. 120

–

132•McCorduck 2004, pp. 211

–

239•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 950

–

952,[154]This is a paraphrase of the relevant implication of Gödel's theorems.[155]The Mathematical Objection:•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 949•McCorduck 2004, pp. 448

–

449Making the Mathematical Objection:•Lucas 1961•Penrose 1989Refuting Mathematical Objection:•Turing 1950 under "(2) The Mathematical Objection"•Hofstadter 1979Background:•Gödel 1931, Church 1936, Kleene 1935, Turing 1937[156]This version is from Searle (1999), and is also quoted in Dennett 1991, p. 435. Searle's original formulation was "The appropriatelyprogrammed computer really is a mind, in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to understand and have othercognitive states." (Searle 1980, p. 1). Strong AI is defined similarly by Russell & Norvig (2003, p. 947): "The assertion that machines couldpossibly act intelligently (or, perhaps better, act as if they were intelligent) is called the 'weak AI' hypothesis by philosophers, and the assertionthat machines that do so are actually thinking (as opposed to simulating thinking) is called the 'strong AI' hypothesis."[157]Searle's Chinese Room argument:•Searle 1980. Searle's original presentation of the thought experiment.•Searle 1999.Discussion:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 958

–

960•McCorduck 2004, pp. 443

–

445•Crevier 1993, pp. 269

–

271[158]Robot rights:•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 964•"Robots could demand legal rights" (http://news.

bbc.

co.

uk/2/hi/technology/6200005.

stm).

BBC News

. 21 December 2006. .Retrieved 3 February 2011.Prematurity of:•Henderson, Mark (24 April 2007). "Human rights for robots? We're getting carried away" (http://www.

timesonline.

co.

uk/tol/news/uk/ science/article1695546.

ece).

The Times Online

(London). .In fiction:•McCorduck (2004, p. 190-25) discusses

Frankenstein

and identifies the key ethical issues as scientific hubris and the suffering of themonster, i.e. robot rights.[159]Independent documentary Plug & Pray, featuring Joseph Weizenbaum and Raymond Kurzweil (http://www.

plugandpray-film.

de/en/ content.

html)

Artificial intelligence140

[160]Ford, Martin R. (2009),

The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future

(http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.

com), Acculant Publishing, ISBN 978-1448659814, .

( e-book available free online

(http://www.

thelightsinthetunnel.com/)

.)

[161]"Machine Learning: A Job Killer?" (http://econfuture.

wordpress.

com/2011/04/14/machine-learning-a-job-killer/)[162]AI could decrease the demand for human labor:•Russell & Norvig 2003, pp. 960

–

961•Ford, Martin (2009).

The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future

(http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.

com). Acculant Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4486-5981-4. .[163]In the early 70s, Kenneth Colby presented a version of Weizenbaum's ELIZA known as DOCTOR which he promoted as a serioustherapeutic tool. (Crevier 1993, pp. 132

−

144)[164]Joseph Weizenbaum's critique of AI:•Weizenbaum 1976•Crevier 1993, pp. 132

−

144•McCorduck 2004, pp. 356

–

373•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 961Weizenbaum (the AI researcher who developed the first chatterbot program, ELIZA) argued in 1976 that the misuse of artificial intelligencehas the potential to devalue human life.[165]Technological singularity:•Vinge 1993•Kurzweil 2005•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 963[166]Transhumanism:•Moravec 1988•Kurzweil 2005•Russell & Norvig 2003, p. 963[167]AI as evolution:•Edward Fredkin is quoted in McCorduck (2004, p. 401).•Butler, Samuel (13 June 1863).

the Press

(Christchurch, New Zealand). http://www.

nzetc.

org/tm/scholarly/ tei-ButFir-t1-g1-t1-g1-t4-body.

html, Letter to the Editor.•Dyson, George (1998).

Darwin among the Machiens

. Allan Lane Science. ISBN 0738200301.

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––

>). "Data characteristics that determine classifier performance" (http://www.

patternrecognition.co.za/publications/cvdwalt_data_characteristics_classifiers.pdf) (PDF). Retrieved 5 August 2009.•Vinge, Vernor (1993). "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era" (http:// www-rohan.

sdsu.

edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html).•Wason, P. C.; Shapiro, D. (1966). "Reasoning". In Foss, B. M..

New horizons in psychology

. Harmondsworth:Penguin.•Weizenbaum, Joseph (1976).

Computer Power and Human Reason

. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Company.ISBN 0716704641.

Further reading

•TechCast Article Series, John Sagi, Framing Consciousness (http://www.techcast.

org/Upload/PDFs/ 634146249446122137_Consciousness-Sagifinalversion.

pdf)•Boden, Margaret, Mind As Machine, Oxford University Press, 2006•Johnston, John (2008) "The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI", MIT Press•Myers, Courtney Boyd ed. (2009). The AI Report (http://www.forbes.

com/2009/06/22/ singularity-robots-computers-opinions-contributors-artificial-intelligence-09_land.

html). Forbes June 2009•Serenko, Alexander (2010). "The development of an AI journal ranking based on the revealed preferenceapproach" (http://foba.

lakeheadu.ca/serenko/papers/JOI_Serenko_AI_Journal_Ranking_Published.

pdf)(PDF).

Journal of Informetrics

4

(4): 447

–

459. doi:10.1016/j.joi.2010.04.001.•Sun, R. & Bookman, L. (eds.),

Computational Architectures: Integrating Neural and Symbolic Processes

. KluwerAcademic Publishers, Needham, MA. 1994.

External links

•What Is AI? (http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai/whatisai.

html)

—

An introduction to artificialintelligence by AI founder John McCarthy.•Logic and Artificial Intelligence (http://plato.stanford.

edu/entries/logic-ai) entry by Richmond Thomason inthe

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

•AI (http://www.

dmoz.

org/Computers/Artificial_Intelligence//) at the Open Directory Project•AITopics (http://aaai.

org/AITopics/)

—

A large directory of links and other resources maintained by theAssociation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the leading organization of academic AI researchers.•Artificial Intelligence Discussion group (https://www.researchgate.net/group/Artificial_Intelligence)

Attention145

Attention

is the cognitive process of paying attention to one aspect of the environment while ignoring others.Attention is one of the most intensely studied topics within psychology and cognitive neuroscience.In 1890, William James, in his textbook

Principles of Psychology

, remarked:

“

Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem severalsimultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German.

[1]

”

Attention remains a major area of investigation within education, psychology and neuroscience. Areas of activeinvestigation involve determining the source of the signals that generate attention, the effects of these signals on thetuning properties of sensory neurons, and the relationship between attention and other cognitive processes likeworking memory. Another ongoing line of research involves studying how attention is disrupted early in thedevelopment of different disorders, and how abnormalities in the allocation of attention can affect subsequentlearning

[2]

.

History of the study of attention

1850s to 1900s

In William James' time, the method more commonly used to study attention was introspection. However, as early as1858, Franciscus Donders used mental chronometry to study attention and it was considered a major field of intellectual inquiry by authors such as Sigmund Freud. One major debate in this period was whether it was possibleto attend to two things at once (split attention). Walter Benjamin described this experience as "reception in a state of distraction." This disagreement could only be resolved through experimentation.

1950s to present

In the 1950s, research psychologists renewed their interest in attention when the dominant epistemology shifted frompositivism (i.e., behaviorism) to realism during what has come to be known as the "cognitive revolution".

[3]

Thecognitive revolution admitted unobservable cognitive processes like attention as legitimate objects of scientificstudy.Modern research on attention began with the analysis of the "cocktail party problem" by Colin Cherry in 1953. At acocktail party how do people select the conversation that they are listening to and ignore the rest? This problem is attimes called "focused attention", as opposed to "divided attention". Cherry performed a number of experimentswhich became known as dichotic listening and were extended by Donald Broadbent and others.

[4]

In a typicalexperiment, subjects woulduse a set of headphonesto listen to twostreams of words in different ears and selectively attend to one stream. After the task, the experimenter would question the subjects about the content of the unattendedstream. Experiments by Gray and Wedderburn and later Anne Treisman pointed out various problems in Broadbent'searly model and eventually led to the Deutsch-Norman model in 1968. In this model, no signal is filtered out, but allare processed to the point of activating their stored representations in memory. The point at which attention becomes"selective" is when one of the memory representations is selected for further processing. At any time, only one canbe selected, resulting in the

attentional bottleneck

.

[5]

This debate became known as the early-selection vs late-selection models. In the early selection models (firstproposed by Donald Broadbent and Anne Treisman), attention shuts down or attenuates processing in the unattendedear before the mind can analyze its semantic content. In the late selection models (first proposed by J. Anthony

Attention146Deutsch and Diana Deutsch), the content in both ears is analyzed semantically, but the words in the unattended earcannot access consciousness.

[6]

This debate has still not been resolved.Anne Treisman developed the highly influential feature integration theory.

[7]

According to this model, attentionbinds different features of an object (e.g., color and shape) into consciously experienced wholes. Although thismodel has received much criticism, it is still widely cited and spawned similar theories with modification, such asJeremy Wolfe's Guided Search Theory.

[8]

In the 1960s, Robert Wurtz at the National Institutes of Health began recording electrical signals from the brains of macaques who were trained to perform attentional tasks. These experiments showed for the first time that there was adirect neural correlate of a mental process (namely, enhanced firing in the superior colliculus).In the 1990s, psychologists began using PET and later fMRI to image the brain in attentive tasks. Because of thehighly expensive equipment that was generally only available in hospitals, psychologists sought for cooperation withneurologists. Pioneers of brain imaging studies of selective attentionare psychologist Michael I. Posner (then alreadyrenowned for his seminal workon visual selective attention) and neurologist Marcus Raichle. Their results soonsparked interest from the entire neuroscience community in thesepsychological studies, which had until thenfocused on monkey brains. With the development of these technological innovations neuroscientists becameinterested in this type of research that combines sophisticated experimental paradigms from cognitive psychologywith these new brain imaging techniques. Although the older technique of EEG had long been used to study thebrain activity underlying selective attention by cognitive psychophysiologists, the ability of the newer techniques toactually measure precisely localized activity inside the brain generated renewed interest by a wider community of researchers. The results of these experiments have shown a broad agreement with the psychological,psychophysiological and the experiments performed on monkeys.

Selective Attention

In cognitive psychology there are at least two models whichdescribe how visual attention operates. These models may beconsidered loosely as metaphors which are used to describeinternal processes and to generate hypotheses that are falsifiable.Generally speaking, visual attention is thought to operate as atwo-stage process.

[9]

In the first stage, attention is distributeduniformly over the external visual scene and processing of information is performed in parallel. In the second stage, attentionis concentrated to a specific area of the visual scene (i.e. it isfocused), and processing is performed in a serial fashion.The first of these models to appear in the literature is the spotlightmodel. The term "spotlight" was first used by David LaBerge,

[10]

and was inspired by the work of William James who describedattention as having a focus, a margin, and a fringe.

[11]

The focus is an area that extracts information from the visualscene with a high-resolution, the geometric center of which being where visual attention is directed. Surrounding thefocus is the fringe of attention which extracts information in a much more crude fashion (i.e. low-resolution). Thisfringe extends out to a specified area and this cut-off is called the margin.The second model is called the zoom-lens model, and was first introduced in 1983.

[12]

This model inherits allproperties of the spotlight model (i.e. the focus, the fringe, and the margin) but has the added property of changing insize. This size-change mechanism was inspired by the zoom lens you might find on a camera, and any change in sizecan be described by a trade-off in the efficiency of processing.

[13]

The zoom-lens of attention can be described interms of an inverse trade-off between the size of focus and the efficiency of processing: because attentional resources

Attention147are assumed to be fixed, then it follows that the larger the focus is, the slower processing will be of that region of thevisual scene since this fixed resource will be distributed over a larger area. It is thought that the focus of attentioncan subtend a minimum of 1° of visual angle,

[11]

[14]

however the maximum size has not yet been determined.

Bottom-Up vs Top-Down

Attention Researchers have described two different aspects of how our minds select items present in the environmentto attend to.The first aspect is called bottom-up processing, also known as stimulus-driven attention or exogenous attention.These describe the aspects of our attentional processing that are thought to be driven by the properties of the objectsthemselves. These aspects of attention are thought to involve parietal and temporal cortices, as well as thebrainstem

[15]

. Certain aspects of an object's properties, such as motion or a sudden loud noise, have the capacity toattract our attention in a pre-conscious, or non-volitional way. We attend to them whether we want to or not

[16]

.The second aspects is called top-down processing, also known as goal-driven, endogenous attention, attentionalcontrol or executive attention. This refers to those aspects of our attentional orienting which are under the control of the person who is attending. In the brain, it is thought to be mediated primarily by the frontal cortex and basalganglia

[17]

.

Attentional Control/Executive Attention

Attentional control, also known as endogenous or executive attention, refers to our capacity to choose what we payattention to and what we ignore

[18]

. It is considered one of the executive functions

[19]

, mediated primarily by frontalareas of the brain

[20]

. Subcomponents of attentional control include conflict resolution and inhibition

[21]

.Individuals' capacity to exercise attentional control has been shown to relate to other aspects of the executivefunctions, such as working memory

[22]

.

Overt and covert attention

Attention may be differentiated according to its status as "overt" versus "covert".

[23]

Overt attention is the act of directing sense organs towards a stimulus source. Covert attention is the act of mentally focusing on one of severalpossible sensory stimuli. Covert attention is thought to be a neural process that enhances the signal from a particularpart of the sensory panorama. (e.g. While reading, shifting overt attention would amount to movement of eyes toread different words, but covert attention shift would occur when you shift your focus from semantic processing of word to the font or color of the word you are reading.)There are studies that suggest the mechanisms of overt and covert attention may not be as separate as previouslybelieved. Though humans and primates can look in one direction but attend in another, there may be an underlyingneural circuitry that links shifts in covert attention to plans to shift gaze. For example, if individuals attend to theright hand corner field of view, movement of the eyes in that direction may have to be actively suppressed.The current view is that visual covert attention is a mechanism for quickly scanning the field of view for interestinglocations. This shift in covert attention is linked to eye movement circuitry that sets up a slower saccade to thatlocation.

Attention148

Influence of Processing Load

One theory regarding selective attention is the load theory, which states that there are two mechanisms that affectattention: cognitive and perceptual. The perceptual considers the subject

’

s ability to perceive or ignore stimuli, bothtask-related and non task-related. Studies show that if there are many stimuli present (especially if they aretask-related), it is much easier to ignore the non-task related stimuli, but if there are few stimuli the mind willperceive the irrelevant stimuli as well as the relevant. The cognitive refers to the actual processing of the stimuli,studies regarding this showed that the ability to process stimuli decreased with age, meaning that younger peoplewere able to perceive more stimuli and fully process them, but were likely to process both relevant and irrelevantinformation, while older people could process fewer stimuli, but usually processed only relevant information.

[24]

Some people can process multiple stimuli, e.g. trained morse code operators have been able to copy 100% of amessage while carrying on a meaningful conversation. This relies on the reflexive response due to "overlearning" theskill of morse code reception/detection/transcription so that it is an autonomous function requiring no specificattention to perform.

Neural correlates of attention

Most experiments show that one neural correlate of attention is enhanced firing. If a neuron has a certain response toa stimulus when the animal is not attending to the stimulus, then when the animal does attend to the stimulus, theneuron's response will be enhanced even if the physical characteristics of the stimulus remain the same.In a recent review, Knudsen

[25]

describes a more general model which identifies four core processes of attention,with working memory at the center:•Working memory temporarily stores information for detailed analysis.•Competitive selection is the process that determines which information gains access to working memory.•Through top-down sensitivity control, higher cognitive processes can regulate signal intensity in informationchannels that compete for access to working memory, and thus give them an advantage in the process of competitive selection. Through top-down sensitivity control, the momentary content of working memory caninfluence the selection of new information, and thus mediate voluntary control of attention in a recurrent loop(endogenous attention).

[26]

•Bottom-up saliency filters automatically enhance the response to infrequent stimuli, or stimuli of instinctive orlearned biological relevance (exogenous attention

[26]

).Neurally, at different hierarchical levels spatial maps can enhance or inhibit activity in sensory areas, and induceorienting behaviors like eye movement.•At the top of the hierarchy, the frontal eye fields (FEF) on the dorsolateral frontal cortex contain a retinocentricspatial map. Microstimulation in the FEF induces monkeys to make a saccade to the relevant location. Stimulationat levels too low to induce a saccade will nonetheless enhance cortical responses to stimuli located in the relevantarea.•At the next lower level, a variety of spatial maps are found in the parietal cortex. In particular, the lateralintraparietal area (LIP) contains a saliency map and is interconnected both with the FEF and with sensory areas.•Certain automatic responses that influence attention, like orienting to a highly salient stimulus, are mediatedsubcortically by the superior colliculi.•At the neural network level, it is thought that processes like lateral inhibition mediate the process of competitiveselection.In many cases attention produces changes in the EEG. Many animals, including humans, produce gamma waves(40

–

60 Hz) when focusing attention on a particular object or activity.

[27]

Attention149

References

[1]James, W. (1890).

The Principles of Psychology.

New York: Henry Holt, Vol. 1, pp. 403-404.[2]Scerif, G. Attention trajectories, mechanisms and outcomes: at the interface between developing cognition and environment. DevelopmentalScience 13(6): 805-812.[3]Harré, Rom.

Cognitive science: A philosophical introduction

. London: SAGE Publications, 2002. ISBN 0761947469.[4]

Understanding cognition

by Peter J. Hampson, Peter Edwin Morris 1996 ISBN 0631157514 page 112[5]

Understanding cognition

by Peter J. Hampson, Peter Edwin Morris 1996 ISBN 0631157514 pages 115-116[6]Deutsch, J.A.; Deutsch, D. (1963). "Attention: some theoretical considerations".

Psychological Review

70

: 80

–

90. doi:10.1037/h0039515.PMID 14027390.[7]Treisman, A.; Gelade, G. (1980). "A feature-integration theory of attention".

Cognitive Psychology

12

(1): 97

–

136.doi:10.1016/0010-0285(80)90005-5. PMID 7351125.[8]Wolfe, J.M. (1994). "Guided search 2.0: a revised model of visual search" (http://www.

psychonomic.

org/backissues/4180/0107.

pdf).

Psychonomic Bulletin Review

1

(2): 202

–

238. .[9]Jonides J. (1983). "Further towards a model of the mind's eye's movement" (http://www-personal.

umich.

edu/~jjonides/pdf/1983_4.

pdf)(PDF).

Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society

21

(4): 247

–

250. .[10]LaBerge D. (1983). "Spatial extent of attention to letters and words".

Journal of experimental psychology: Human perception and performance

9

(3): 371

–

379. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.9.3.371.[11]Eriksen, C; Hoffman, J. (1972). "Temporal and spatial characteristics of selective encoding from visual displays" (http://psycnet.

apa.

org/ ?fa=main.

doiLanding&uid=1973-01584-001).

Perception & Psychophysics

12

(2B): 201

–

204. .[12]Eriksen, C; St James, J. (1986). "Visual attention within and around the field of focal attention: A zoom lens model".

Perception & Psychophysics

40

(4): 225

–

240. PMID 3786090.[13]Castiello, U; Umilta, C. (1990). "Size of the attentional focus and efficiency of processing".

Acta Psychologica

73

(3): 195

–

209.doi:10.1016/0001-6918(90)90022-8. PMID 2353586.[14]Eriksen, CW; Hoffman, JE. (1973). "The extent of processing of noise elements during selective encoding from visual displays" (http:// www.

psychonomic.

org/backissues/21786//pp/vol14-1/pp-14-155.pdf) (PDF).

Perception & Psychophysics

14

(1): 155

–

160. .[15]Posner, M. I. & Petersen, S. E. (1990) The attention system of the human brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience 13: 25-42.[16]Theeuwes, J. (1991 Exogenous and endogenous control of attention - the effect of visual onsets and offsets. Perception & Psychophysics49(1): 83-90.[17]Posner, M. I. & Petersen, S. E. (1990) The attention system of the human brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience 13: 25-42.[18]Posner, M.I. & Rothbart, M.K. Attention, self-regulation and consciousness. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B (1998) 353, 1915-1927[19]Posner, M. I. (1980) ORIENTING OF ATTENTION. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 32(FEB): 3-25.[20]Posner, M. I. & Petersen, S. E. (1990) The attention system of the human brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience 13: 25-42.[21]Rueda, M. R., Rothbart, M. K., McCandliss, B. D., Saccomanno, L. & Posner, M. I. (2005) Training, maturation, and genetic influences onthe development of executive attention. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102(41):14931-14936.[22]Astle, D. E. & Scerif, G. (2009) Using Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience to Study Behavioral and Attentional Control. DevelopmentalPsychobiology 51(2): 107-118.[23]Wright, R.D. & Ward, L.M. (2008). Orienting of Attention. Oxford University Press[24]Lavie, Nilli; Hirst, Aleksandra; de Fockert, Jan W.; Viding, Essi (2004). "Load theory of selective attention and cognitive control" (http:// www.

icn.

ucl.

ac.

uk/lavielab/reprints/Lavie-etal-04.pdf).

Journal of Experimental Psychology

133

(3): 339

–

54.doi:10.1037/0096-3445.133.3.339. PMID 15355143. .[25]Knudsen, Eric I (2007). "Fundamental Components of Attention".

Annual Review of Neuroscience

30

(1): 57

–

78.doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.30.051606.094256. PMID 17417935.[26]Pattyn, N.; Neyt, X.; Henderickx, D.; Soetens, E. (2008). "Psychophysiological Investigation of Vigilance Decrement: Boredom orCognitive Fatigue?".

Physiology & Behavior

93

: 369

–

378. doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2007.09.016.[27]Kaiser J, Lutzenberger W (2003). "Induced gamma-band activity and human brain function".

Neuroscientist

9

(6): 475

–

84.doi:10.1177/1073858403259137. PMID 14678580.

Awareness150

Awareness

is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects or sensory patterns. In thislevel of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying understanding.More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something. In biological psychology, awareness is definedas a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event.

Concept

Awareness is a relative concept. An animal may be partially aware, may be subconsciously aware, or may be acutelyaware of an event. Awareness may be focused on an internal state, such as a visceral feeling, or on external events byway of sensory perception. Awareness provides the raw material from which animals develop qualia, or subjectiveideas about their experience.Also used to distinguish sensory perception is the word "awarement." "Awarement" is the established form of awareness. Once one has accomplished their sense of awareness they have come to terms with awarement.

Self-awareness

Popular ideas about consciousness suggest the phenomenon describes a condition of being aware of one's awarenessor, self-awareness. Efforts to describe consciousness in neurological terms have focused on describing networks inthe brain that develop awareness of the qualia developed by other networks.

[1]

Neuroscience

Neural systems that regulate attention serve to attenuate awareness among complex animals whose central andperipheral nervous system provides more information than cognitive areas of the brain can assimilate. Within anattenuated system of awareness, a mind might be aware of much more than is being contemplated in a focusedextended consciousness.

Basic awareness

Basic awareness of one's internal and external world depends on the brain stem. Bjorn Merker,

[2]

an independentneuroscientist in Stockholm, Sweden, argues that the brain stem supports an elementary form of conscious thought ininfants with hydranencephaly. "Higher" forms of awareness including self-awareness require cortical contributions,but "primary consciousness" or "basic awareness" as an ability to integrate sensations from the environment withone's immediate goals and feelings in order to guide behavior, springs from the brain stem which human beings sharewith most of the vertebrates. Psychologist Carroll Izard emphasizes that this form of primary consciousness consistsof the capacity to generate emotions and an awareness of one's surroundings, but not an ability to talk about what onehas experienced. In the same way, people can become conscious of a feeling that they can't label or describe, aphenomenon that's especially common in pre-verbal infants.Due to this discovery medical definitions of brain death as a lack of cortical activity face a serious challenge.

Awareness151

Basic interests

Down the brain stem lie interconnected regions that regulate the direction of eye gaze and organize decisions aboutwhat to do next, such as reaching for a piece of food or pursuing a potential mate.

Changes in awareness

The ability to consciously detect an image when presented at near-threshold stimulus varies across presentations.One factor is "baseline shifts" due to top down attention that modulates ongoing brain activity in sensory cortex areasthat affects the neural processing of subsequent perceptual judgments.

[3]

Such top down biasing can occur throughtwo distinct processes: an attention driven baseline shift in the alpha waves, and a decision bias reflected in gammawaves.

[4]

Living systems view

Outside of neuroscience biologists, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela contributed their Santiago theory of cognition in which they wrote:Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement isvalid for all organisms, with or without a nervous system.

[5]

This theory contributes a perspective that cognition is a process present at organic levels that we don't usuallyconsider to be aware. Given the possible relationship between awareness and cognition, and consciousness, thistheory contributes an interesting perspective in the philosophical and scientific dialogue of awareness and livingsystems theory.

Communications and information systems

Awareness is also a concept used in Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW. Its definition has not yetreached a consensus in the scientific community in this general expression.However,

context awareness

and

location awareness

are concepts of large importance especially for AAA(authentication, authorization, accounting) applications.The composed term of location awareness still is gaining momentum with the growth of ubiquitous computing. Firstdefined with networked work positions (network location awareness), it has been extended to mobile phones andother mobile communicable entities. The term covers a common interest in whereabouts of remote entities,especially individuals and their cohesion in operation.The composed term of context awareness is a superset including the concept of location awareness. It extends theawareness to context features of operational target as well as to context or (?) and context of operational area.

Covert awareness

Covert awareness is the knowledge of something without knowing it. Some patients with specific brain damage arefor example unable to tell if a pencil is horizontal or vertical. They are however able to grab the pencil, using thecorrect orientation of the hand and wrist. This condition implies that some of the knowledge the mind possesses isdelivered through alternate channels than conscious intent.

Other uses

Awareness forms a basic concept of the theory and practice of Gestalt therapy.In general, "awareness" may also refer to public or common knowledge or understanding about a social, scientific, orpolitical issue, and hence many movements try to foster "awareness" of a given subject. Examples include AIDS

Awareness152awareness and Multicultural awareness.Awareness may refer to Anesthesia awareness.

References

[1]

Self-awareness: its nature and development

. New York, NY: Guilford Press. 1998. pp. 12

–

13. ISBN 1572303174.[2]Consciousness in the Raw (http://www.sciencenews.

org/articles/20070915/bob9.asp), Science News Online, September 2007[3]Sylvester CM, Shulman GL, Jack AI, Corbetta M (December 2007). "Asymmetry of anticipatory activity in visual cortex predicts the locus of attention and perception" (http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/reprint/27/52/14424).

J. Neurosci.

27

(52): 14424

–

33.doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3759-07.2007. PMID 18160650. .[4]Wyart, V.; Tallon-Baudry, C. (July 2009). "How Ongoing Fluctuations in Human Visual Cortex Predict Perceptual Awareness: Baseline Shiftversus Decision Bias".

Journal of Neuroscience

29

(27): 8715

–

8725. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0962-09.2009. PMID 19587278.[5]Capra, Fritjof (1996).

The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems

. Garden City, N.Y: Anchor Books.ISBN 0-385-47676-0.

External links

•LaBar KS, Disterhoft JF (1998). "Conditioning, awareness, and the hippocampus".

Hippocampus

8

(6): 620

–

6.doi:10.1002/(SICI)1098-1063(1998)8:6<620::AID-HIPO4>3.0.CO;2-6. PMID 9882019.•Cornell University (http://www.news.

cornell.

edu/Chronicle/05/3.

3.

05/brain_damage_aware.

html): Recentfindings in the awareness of brain damaged people.

Behavioral neuroscience

, also known as

biological psychology

,

[1]

biopsychology

, or

psychobiology

[2]

is theapplication of the principles of biology (in particular neurobiology), to the study of physiological, genetic, anddevelopmental mechanisms of behavior in human and non-human animals. It typically investigates at the level of nerves, neurotransmitters, brain circuitry and the basic biological processes that underlie normal and abnormalbehavior. Most typically, experiments in behavioral neuroscience involve non-human animal models (such as ratsand mice, and non-human primates) which have implications for better understanding of human pathology andtherefore contribute to evidence-based practice.

History

Behavioral neuroscience as a scientific discipline emerged from a variety of scientific and philosophical traditions inthe 18th and 19th centuries. In philosophy, men like René Descartes proposed physical models to explain animal andhuman behavior. Descartes, for example, suggested that the pineal gland, a midline unpaired structure in the brain of many organisms, was the point of contact between mind and body. Descartes also elaborated on a theory in whichthe pneumatics of bodily fluids could explain reflexes and other motor behavior. This theory was inspired by movingstatues in a garden in Paris.

[3]

Other philosophers also helped give birth to psychology. One of the earliest textbooks in the new field,

The Principles of Psychology

by William James (1890), argues that the scientific study of psychology should begrounded in an understanding of biology:

“

Bodily experiences, therefore, and more particularly brain-experiences, must take a place amongst those conditions of the mental life of whichPsychology need take account. The spiritualist and the associationist must both be 'cerebralists,' to the extent at least of admitting that certainpeculiarities in the way of working of their own favorite principles are explicable only by the fact that the brain laws are a codeterminant of their result.Our first conclusion, then, is that a certain amount of brain-physiology must be presupposed or included in Psychology.[4]

”

Behavioral neuroscience153James, like many early psychologists, had considerable training in physiology. The emergence of both psychologyand behavioral neuroscience as legitimate sciences can be traced from the emergence of physiology from anatomy,particularly neuroanatomy. Physiologists conducted experiments on living organisms, a practice that was distrustedby the dominant anatomists of the 18th and 19th centuries.

[5]

The influential work of Claude Bernard, Charles Bell,and William Harvey helped to convince the scientific community that reliable data could be obtained from livingsubjects.The term "psychobiology" has been used in a variety of contexts,emphasizing the importance of biology, which isthe discipline that studies organic, neural and cellular modifications in behavior, plasticity in neuroscience, andbiological deceases in all aspects, in addition, biology focuses and analyzes behavior and all the subjects it isconcerned about, from a scientific point of view. In this context, psychology helps as a complementary, butimportant discipline in the neurobiological sciences. The role of psychology in this questions is that of a social toolthat backs up the main or strongest biological science. The term "psychobiology" was first used in its modern senseby Knight Dunlap in his book

An Outline of Psychobiology (1914)

.

[6]

Dunlap also was the founder andeditor-in-chief of the journal

Psychobiology

. In the announcement of that journal, Dunlap writes that the journal willpublish research "...bearing on the interconnection of mental and physiological functions", which describes the fieldof behavioral neuroscience even in its modern sense.

[6]

Relationship to other fields of psychology and biology

In many cases, humans may serve as experimental subjects in behavioral neuroscience experiments; however, a greatdeal of the experimental literature in behavioral neuroscience comes from the studyof non-human species, mostfrequently rats, mice, and monkeys. As a result, a critical assumption in behavioral neuroscience is that organismsshare biological and behavioral similarities, enough to permit extrapolations across species. This allies behavioralneuroscience closely with comparative psychology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, andneurobiology. Behavioral neuroscience also has paradigmatic and methodological similarities to neuropsychology,which relies heavily on the study of the behavior of humans with nervous system dysfunction (i.e., anon-experimentally based biological manipulation).Synonyms for behavioral neuroscience include biopsychology and psychobiology.

[7]

Physiological psychology isanother term often used synonymously with behavioral neuroscience, though authors would make physiologicalpsychology a subfield of behavioral neuroscience, with an appropriately narrow definition.

Research methods

The distinguishing characteristic of a behavioral neuroscience experiment is that either the independent variable of the experiment is biological, or some dependent variable is biological. In other words, the nervous system of theorganism under study is permanently or temporarily altered, or some aspect of the nervous system is measured(usually to be related to a behavioral variable).

Disabling or decreasing neural function

•

Lesions

- A classic method in which a brain-region of interest is destroyed or stimulated to observe any resultingchanges such as degraded or enhanced performance on some behavioral measure. Lesions can be placed withrelatively high accuracy thanks to a variety of brain 'atlases' which provide a map of brain regions in3-dimensional stereotactic coordinates.•

Surgical lesions

- Neural tissue is destroyed by removing it surgically.•

Electrolytic lesions

- Neural tissue is destroyed through the application of electrical shock trauma.•

Chemical lesions

- Neural tissue is destroyed by the infusion of a neurotoxin.

Behavioral neuroscience154•

Temporary lesions

- Neural tissue is temporarily disabled by cooling or by the use of anesthetics such astetrodotoxin.•

Transcranial magnetic stimulation

- A new technique usually used with human subjects in which a magneticcoil applied to the scalp causes unsystematic electrical activity in nearby cortical neurons which can beexperimentally analyzed as a functional lesion.•

Psychopharmacological manipulations

- A chemical receptor antagonist induces neural activity by interferingwith neurotransmission. Antagonists can be delivered systemically (such as by intravenous injection) or locally(intracerebrally) during a surgical procedure into the ventricles or into specific brain structures. For example,NMDA antagonist AP5 has been shown to inhibit the initiation of long term potentiation of excitatory synaptictransmission (in rodent fear conditioning) which is believed to be a vital mechanism in learning and memory.

[8]

•

optogenetic inhibition

- A light activated inhibitory protein is expressed in cells of interest. Powerful millisecondtimescale neuronal inhibition is instigated upon stimulation by the appropriate frequency of light delivered viafiber optics or implanted LEDs in the case of vertebrates,

[9]

or via external illumination for small, sufficientlytranslucent invertebrates.

[10]

Bacterial Halorhodopsins or Proton pumps are the two classes of proteins used forinhibitory optogenetics, achieving inhibition by increasing cytoplasmic levels of halides (Cl-) or decreasing thecytoplasmic concentration of protons, respectively.

[11]

[12]

Enhancing neural function

•

Electrical Stimulation

- A classic method in which neural activity is enhanced by application of a smallelectrical current (too small to cause significant cell death).•

Psychopharmacological manipulations

- A chemical receptor agonist facilitates neural activity by enhancing orreplacing endogenous neurotransmitters. Agonists can be delivered systemically (such as by intravenousinjection) or locally (intracerebrally) during a surgical procedure.•

Transcranial magnetic stimulation

- In some cases (for example, studies of motor cortex), this technique can beanalyzed as having a stimulatory effect (rather than as a functional lesion).•

optogenetic excitation

- A light activated excitatory protein is expressed in select cells. Channelrhodopsin-2(ChR2), a light activated cation channel, was the first bacterial opsin shown to excite neurons in response tolight,

[13]

though a number of new excitatory optogenetic tools have now been generated by improving andimparting novel properties to ChR2

[14]

Measuring neural activity

•

Optical techniques

- Optical methods for recording neuronal activity rely on methods that modify the opticalproperties of neurons in response to the cellular events associated with action potentials or neurotransmitterrelease.•Voltage sensitive dyes (VSDs) were among the earliest method for optically detecting action potentials. VSDscommonly become fluorescent in response to a neuron's change in voltage, rendering individual actionpotentials detectable.

[15]

Genetically encoded voltage sensitive fluorescent proteins have also beendeveloped.

[16]

•Calcium imaging relies on dyes

[17]

or genetically encoded proteins

[18]

that fluoresce upon binding to thecalcium that is transiently present during an action potential.•Synapto-pHluorin is a technique that relies on a fusion protein that combines a synaptic vesicle membraneprotein and a pH sensitive fluorescent protein. Upon synaptic vesicle release, the chimeric protein is exposedto the higher pH of the synaptic cleft, causing a measurable change in fluorescence.

[19]

•

Single-unit recording

- A method whereby an electrode is introduced into the brain of a living animal to detectelectrical activity that is generated by the neurons adjacent to the electrode tip. Normally this is performed withsedated animals but sometimes it is performed on awake animals engaged in a behavioral event, such as a thirsty

Behavioral neuroscience155rat whisking a particular sandpaper grade previously paired with water in order to measure the correspondingpatterns of neuronal firing at the decision point.

[20]

•

Multielectrode recording

- The use of a bundle of fine electrodes to record the simultaneous activity of up tohundreds of neurons.•

fMRI

- Functional magnetic resonance imaging, a technique most frequently applied on human subjects, in whichchanges in cerebral blood flow can be detected in an MRI apparatus and are taken to indicate relative activity of larger scale brain regions (i.e., on the order of hundreds of thousands of neurons).•

Electroencephalography

- Or EEG; and the derivative technique of event-related potentials, in which scalpelectrodes monitor the average activity of neurons in the cortex (again, used most frequently with humansubjects).•

Functional neuroanatomy

- A more complex counterpart of phrenology. The expression of some anatomicalmarker is taken to reflect neural activity. For example, the expression of immediate early genes is thought to becaused by vigorous neural activity. Likewise, the injection of 2-deoxyglucose prior to some behavioral task can befollowed by anatomical localization of that chemical; it is taken up by neurons that are electrically active.•

MEG

- Magnetoencephalography shows the functioning of the human brain through the measurement of electromagnetic activity. Measuring the magnetic fields created by the electric current flowing within the neuronsidentifies brain activity associated with various human functions in real time, with millimeter spatial accuracy.Clinicians can noninvasively obtain data to help them assess neurological disorders and plan surgical treatments.

Genetic manipulations

•

QTL mapping

- The influence of a gene in some behavior can be statistically inferred by studying inbred strainsof some species, most commonly mice. The recent sequencing of the genome of many species, most notablymice, has facilitated this technique.•

Selective breeding

- Organisms, often mice, may be bred selectively among inbred strains to create arecombinant congenic strain. This might be done to isolate an experimentally interesting stretch of DNA derivedfrom one strain on the background genome of another strain to allow stronger inferences about the role of thatstretch of DNA.•

Genetic engineering

- The genome may also be experimentally-manipulated; for example, knockout mice can beengineered to lack a particular gene, or a gene may be expressed in a strain which does not normally do so (the'transgenic'). Advanced techniques may also permit the expression or suppression of a gene to occur by injectionof some regulating chemical.

Limitations and advantages

Different manipulations have advantages and limitations. Neural tissue destroyed by surgery, electric shock orneurotoxcin is a permanent manipulation and therefore limits follow-up investigation.

[21]

Most genetic manipulationtechniques are also considered permanent.

[21]

Temporary lesions can be achieved with advanced in geneticmanipulations, for example, certain genes can now be switched on and off with diet.

[21]

Pharmacologicalmanipulations also allow blocking of certain neurotransmitters temporarily as the function returns to its previousstate after the drug has been metabolized.

[21]

Behavioral neuroscience156

Topic areas in behavioral neuroscience

In general, behavioral neuroscientists study similar themes and issues as academic psychologists, though limited bythe need to use nonhuman animals. As a result, the bulk of literature in behavioral neuroscience deals with mentalprocesses and behaviors that are shared across different animal models such as:•Sensation and perception•Motivated behavior (hunger, thirst, sex)•Control of movement•Learning and memory•Sleep and biological rhythms•EmotionHowever, with increasing technical sophistication and with the development of more precise noninvasive methodsthat can be applied to human subjects, behavioral neuroscientists are beginning to contribute to other classical topicareas of psychology, philosophy, and linguistics, such as:•Language•Reasoning and decision making•ConsciousnessBehavioral neuroscience has also had a strong history of contributing to the understanding of medical disorders,including those that fall under the purview of clinical psychology and biological psychopathology (also known asabnormal psychology). Although animal models do not exist for all mental illnesses, the field has contributedimportant therapeutic data on a variety of conditions, including:•Parkinson's Disease, a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that often impairs the sufferer's motorskills and speech.•Huntington's Disease, a rare inherited neurological disorder whose most obvious symptoms are abnormal bodymovements and a lack of coordination. It also affects a number of mental abilities and some aspects of personality.•Alzheimer's Disease, a neurodegenerative disease that, in its most common form, is found in people over the ageof 65 and is characterized by progressive cognitive deterioration, together with declining activities of daily livingand by neuropsychiatric symptoms or behavioral changes.•Clinical depression, a common psychiatric disorder, characterized by a persistent lowering of mood, loss of interest in usual activities and diminished ability to experience pleasure.•Schizophrenia, a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental illness characterized by impairments in theperception or expression of reality, most commonly manifesting as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarredelusions or disorganized speech and thinking in the context of significant social or occupational dysfunction.•Autism, a brain development disorder that impairs social interaction and communication, and causes restrictedand repetitive behavior, all starting before a child is three years old.•Anxiety, a physiological state characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components. Thesecomponents combine to create the feelings that are typically recognized as fear, apprehension, or worry.•Drug abuse, including alcoholism.

Behavioral neuroscience157

Nobel Laureates

The following Nobel Prize winners could reasonably be considered biological neuroscientists or neurobiologists.(This list omits winners who were almost exclusively neuroanatomists or neurophysiologists; i.e., those that did notmeasure behavioral or neurobiological variables.)•Charles Sherrington (1932)•Edgar Adrian (1932)•Walter Hess (1949)•Egas Moniz (1949)•Georg von Bekesy (1961)•George Wald (1967)•Ragnar Granit (1967)•Konrad Lorenz (1973)•Niko Tinbergen (1973)•Karl von Frisch (1973)•Roger W. Sperry (1981)•David H. Hubel (1981)•Torsten N. Wiesel (1981)•Eric R. Kandel (2000)•Arvid Carlsson (2000)•Richard Axel (2004)•Linda B. Buck (2004)

References

[1]Breedlove, Watson, Rosenzweig, ; Biological Psychology: An Introduction to Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience, 6/e (http://www.amazon.

com/dp/0878933247), ISBN 978-0878937059, p. 2[2]Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary » Psychobiology (http://www.

m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?sourceid=Mozilla-search&va=psychobiology)>[3]Carlson, Neil (2007).

Physiology of Behavior (9th Ed.)

. Allyn and Bacon. pp. 11

–

14. ISBN 0-205-46724-5.[4]James, William (1950/1890).

The Principles of Psychology, Vol. One

. Dover Publications, Inc.. pp. 4

–

5. ISBN 0-486-20381-6.[5]Shepherd, Gordon M. (1991).

Foundations of the Neuron Doctrine

. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506491-7.[6]Dewsbury, Donald (1991). "Psychobiology".

American Psychologist

(46): 198

–

205.[7]S. Marc Breedlove, Mark Rosenzweig and Neil V. Watson (2007). Biological Psychology: An Introduction to Behavioral and CognitiveNeuroscience 6e. Sinauer Associates. ISBN 978-0878937059[8]Kim, Jeansok J.; DeCola, Joseph P.; Landeira-Fernandez, Jesus; Fanselow, Michael S. "N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist APVblocks acquisition but not expression of fear conditioning." Behavioral Neuroscience. Vol 105(1), Feb 1991, 126-133.{doi|10.1037/0735-7044.105.1.126}[9]Schneider et al. "Controlling Neuronal Activity." American Journal of Psychiatry 165:562, May 2008 doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.08030444[10]Zhang, et al. "Multimodal fast optical interrogation of neural circuitry." Nature. Vol 446. 5 April 2007. doi:10.1038/nature05744[11]Chow, B. Y. et al. "High-performance genetically targetable optical neural silencing by light-driven proton pumps." Nature. Vol 463. 7January 2010[12]Gradinaru, Thompson, and Deisseroth. "eNpHR: a Natronomonas halorhodopsin enhanced for optogenetic applications." Brain cell Biology.Vol 36 (1-4). Aug 2008. DOI: 10.1007/s11068-008-9027-6[13]Zhang, Wang, Boyden, and Deisseroth. "Channelrhodopsin-2 and optical control of excitable cells." Nature Methods. VOL.3 NO.10.OCTOBER 2006[14]Gradinaru et al. "Molecular and Cellular Approaches for Diversifying and Extending Optogenetics." Cell. 2010.doi:10.1016/j.cell.2010.02.037[15]Ebner, T. J. and Chen, G. "Use of voltage-sensitive dyes and optical recordings in the central nervous system." Progress in NeurobiologyVolume 46, Issue 5, August 1995, 463-506. DOI: 10.1016/0301-0082(95)00010-S[16]Micah S. Siegel and Ehud Y. Isacoff. "A Genetically Encoded Optical Probe of Membrane Voltage."Neuron, Vol. 19, 735

–

741, October,1997[17]O'Donovan, Hoa, Sholomenkoa, and Yeea. "Real-time imaging of neurons retrogradely and anterogradely labelled with calcium-sensitivedyes." Journal of Neuroscience Methods. Vol 46, Issue 2, February 1993, 91-106. DOI: 10.1016/0165-0270(93)90145-H

Behavioral neuroscience158

[18]Nicola Heim and Oliver Griesbeck. "Genetically Encoded Indicators of Cellular Calcium Dynamics Based on Troponin C and GreenFluorescent Protein." The Journal of Biological Chemistry, 279, 14280-14286. April 2, 2004 doi: 10.1074/jbc. M312751200[19]Gero Miesenböck, Dino A. De Angelis & James E. Rothman1. "Visualizing secretion and synaptic transmission with pH-sensitive greenfluorescent proteins." Nature 394, 192-195 (9 July 1998) | doi:10.1038/28190[20]von Heimendahl, M., Itskov, P., Arabzadeh, E., & Diamond, M. (2007). Neuronal activity in rat barrel cortex underlying texturediscrimination. PLoS Biol, 5(11), e305.[21]T Abel, KM Lattal (2001) "Molecular mechanisms of memory acquisition, consolidation and retrieval"

Current Opinion in Neurobiology

External links

•Biological Psychology Links (http://www.

biopsychology.com/news/)•Theory of Biological Psychology (Documents No. 9 and 10 in English) (http://homepage.

uibk.

ac.

at/~c720126/ humanethologie/ws/medicus/block1/inhalt.

html)•IBRO (International Brain Research Organization) (http://www.

ibro.

info)Outline of psychology

Cognitive neuroscience

is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlyingcognition,

[1]

with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of howpsychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain. Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both psychologyand neuroscience, overlapping with disciplines such as physiological psychology, cognitive psychology andneuropsychology.

[2]

Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in cognitive science coupled with evidence fromneuropsychology, and computational modelling.

[2]

Due to its multidisciplinary nature, cognitive neuroscientists may have various backgrounds. Other than theassociated disciplines just mentioned, cognitive neuroscientists may have backgrounds in these disciplines:neurobiology, bioengineering, psychiatry, neurology, physics, computer science, linguistics, philosophy andmathematics.Methods employed in cognitive neuroscience include experimental paradigms from psychophysics and cognitivepsychology, functional neuroimaging, electrophysiology, cognitive genomics and behavioral genetics. Studies of patients with cognitive deficits due to brain lesions constitute an important aspect of cognitive neuroscience (seeneuropsychology). Theoretical approaches include computational neuroscience and cognitive psychology.

Historical origins

Although the task of cognitive neuroscience is to describe how the brain creates the mind, historically it hasprogressed by investigating how a certain area of the brain supports a given mental faculty. In other words, for mostof its history, the biggest question of cognitive neuroscience was "Where?" We could begin with Aristotle, whoargued that sensory information went from the senses to the heart, which he thought was the seat of reason. Laterobservers correctly identified the brain as the biological substrate for thinking. However, early efforts to subdividethe brain proved problematic. The phrenologist movement failed to supply a scientific basis for their theories and hassince been rejected. However, the phrenological assumption that specific areas of the brain conduct specificfunctions still applies. The modern evidence for this specificity (sometimes called modularity) includes directrecording from single neurons, case studies of patients with brain damage or disease, recording of electrical ormagnetic activity in the brain through advanced scanning techniques, and even direct manipulation of brain activity.

Cognitive neuroscience159

A page from the

American Phrenological Journal

Phrenology

The first roots of cognitive neuroscience lie in phrenology, whichwas a pseudoscientific approach that claimed that behavior couldbe determined by the shape of the scalp. In the early 19th century,Franz Joseph Gall and J. G. Spurzheim believed that the humanbrain was localized into approximately 35 different sections. In hisbook,

The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System inGeneral, and of the Brain in Particular

, Gall claimed that a largerbump in one of these areas meant that that area of the brain wasused more frequently by that person. This theory gainedsignificant public attention, leading to the publication of phrenology journals and the creation of phrenometers, whichmeasured the bumps on a human subject's head. While phrenologyremained a fixture at fairs and carnivals, it did not enjoy wideacceptance within the scientific community.

Aggregate field view

Pierre Flourens, a French experimental psychologist, was one of many scientists that challenged the views of the phrenologists. Through his study of living rabbits and pigeons, hediscovered that lesions to particular areas of the brain produced no discernible change in behavior. He proposed thetheory that the brain is an aggregate field, meaning that different areas of the brain participated in behavior.

Localizationist view

Studies performed in Europe by scientists such as John Hughlings Jackson caused the localizationist view tore-emerge as the primary view of behavior. Jackson studied patients with brain damage, particularly those withepilepsy. He discovered that the epileptic patients often made the same clonic and tonic movements of muscle duringtheir seizures, leading Jackson to believe that they must be occurring in the same place every time. Jackson proposedthat specific functions were localized to specific areas of the brain,

[3]

which was critical to future understanding of the brain lobes.

Emergence of neuropsychology

Broca's area and Wernicke's area.

In 1861, French neurologist Paul Broca came across a man whowas able to understand language but unable to speak. The mancould only produce the sound "tan". It was later discovered that theman had damage to an area of his left frontal lobe now known asBroca's area. Carl Wernicke, a German neurologist, found asimilar patient, except that this patient could speak fluently butnon-sensibly. The patient had been the victim of a stroke, andcould not understand spoken or written language. This patient hada lesion in the area where the left parietal and temporal lobes meet,now known as Wernicke's area. These cases strongly supported thelocalizationists' views, because a lesion caused a specificbehavioral change in both of these patients. The studies of Broca and Wernicke spawned a new research field, whichstudies the relationship between psychological phenomena and lesions (or otherwise induced deficits) of the brain:

Cognitive neuroscience160neuropsychology.

Mapping the brain

In 1870, German physicians Eduard Hitzig and GustavFritsch published their findings about the behavior of animals. Hitzig and Fritsch ran an electrical current through the cerebral cortex of a dog, causing the dog to producecharacteristic movements based on where the current was applied. Since different areas produced differentmovements, the physicians concluded that behavior was rooted at the cellular level. German neuroanatomistKorbinian Brodmann used tissue staining techniques developed by Franz Nissl to see the different types of cells inthe brain. Through this study, Brodmann concluded in 1909 that the human brain consisted of fifty-two distinctareas, now named Brodmann areas. Many of Brodmann's distinctions were very accurate, such as differentiatingBrodmann area 17 from Brodmann area 18.

Neuron doctrine

In the early 20th century, Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Camillo Golgi began working on the structure of the neuron.Golgi developed a silver staining method that could entirely stain several cells in a particular area, leading him tobelieve that neurons were directly connected with each other in one cytoplasm. Cajal challenged this view afterstaining areas of the brain that had less myelin and discovering that neurons were discrete cells. Cajal alsodiscovered that cells transmit electrical signals down the neuron in one direction only. Both Golgi and Cajal wereawarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1906 for this work on the neuron doctrine. The neuron doctrinehas ever since provided a fundamental theory for understanding neurophysiology.

Emergence of a new discipline

Birth of cognitive science

On September 11, 1956, a large-scale meeting of cognitivists took place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. George A. Miller presented his "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" paper while NoamChomsky and Newell & Simon presented their findings on computer science. Ulric Neisser commented on many of the findings at this meeting in his 1967 book

Cognitive Psychology

. The term "psychology" had been waning in the1950s and 1960s, causing the field to be referred to as "cognitive science". Behaviorists such as Miller began tofocus on the representation of language rather than general behavior. David Marr's proposal of the hierarchicalrepresentation of memory caused many psychologists to embrace the idea that mental skills required significantprocessing in the brain, including algorithms.

Combining neuroscience and cognitive science

Before the 1980s, interactionbetween neuroscience and cognitive science was scarce.

[4]

The term 'cognitiveneuroscience' was coinedby George Miller and Michael Gazzaniga

[4]

"in the back seat of a New York City taxi"

[5]

toward the endof the 1970s. Cognitive neuroscience began to integrate the newly laid theoretical ground in cognitive science, that emerged between the1950s and 1960s, with approaches in experimental psychology, neuropsychologyand neuroscience. (Neuroscience was not established as a unified discipline until 1971

[6]

). In the very late 20thcentury new technologies evolved that are now the mainstay of the methodology of cognitive neuroscience,including TMS (1985) and fMRI (1991). Earlier methods used in cognitive neuroscience includes EEG (human EEG1920) and MEG (1968). Occasionally cognitive neuroscientists utilize other brain imaging methods such as PET andSPECT. In some animals Single-unit recording can be used. Other methods include microneurography, facial EMG,and eye-tracking. Integrative neuroscience attempts to consolidate data in databases, and form unified descriptivemodels from various fields and scales: biology, psychology, anatomy, and clinical practice.

Cognitive neuroscience162

References

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The Computational Brain

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Classic Cases: Ancient & Modern Milestones in the Development of NeuropsychologicalScience

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Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the mind

(2nded.). New York: W.W.Norton.•Gazzaniga, M. S.,

The Cognitive Neurosciences III

, (2004), The MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-07254-8•Gazzaniga, M. S., Ed. (1999).

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com/books?id=znbkHaC8QeMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Handbook+of+Thinking+and+Reasoning&sig=ACfU3U2qCejhQ4oS_tmJf0h67aHzkZq-fQ#PPP1,M1The)•Handbook of Mathematical Cognition By Jamie I. D. Campbell (http://books.

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com/books?id=0ojq3qdhf7QC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Working+Memory+Capacity&sig=ACfU3U032ARTJN6W9jEbJXH2tDML8H7XEg#PPR7,M1Working)•Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science (http://books.

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google.

ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fZuFD4AJOscC&oi=fnd&pg=PA49&dq=On+the+capacity+of+attention:+Its+estimation+and+its+role+in+working+memory+and+cognitive+aptitudes+&ots=esLBgFTqDF&sig=KkkpgHEOlYmGGauovmxXCFidhqc#PPR16,M1)•Memory Capacity By Nelson Cowan (http://books.google.

ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=00UOAAAAQAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=On+the+capacity+of+attention:+Its+estimation+and+its+role+in+working+memory+and+cognitive+aptitudes+&ots=OHEWdRVcsx&sig=0bIY_lQUk_o12DrB68wtwp7kEDgWorking)•Cognition and Intelligence By Robert J. Sternberg, Jean E. Pretz (http://books.

google.

com/ books?id=2L5CDYhA1R4C&pg=PA268&dq=Mike+Anderson&sig=ACfU3U1WL2kUZB9Jnk02II1yVVuaNoy5-Q#PPA89,M1)•General Factor of Intelligence By Robert J. Sternberg, Elena Grigorenko (http://books.google.

ca/ books?hl=en&lr=&id=2OjruFlEWukC&oi=fnd&pg=PA415&dq=On+the+capacity+of+attention:+Its+estimation+and+its+role+in+working+memory+and+cognitive+aptitudes+&ots=eBlVihiMdH&sig=7OEu8Sxs1Le0Fhv_fsXiFb_NmPo#PPA91,M1The)•Neurological Basis of Learning, Development and Discovery By Anton E. Lawson (http://books.

google.

ca/ books?hl=en&lr=&id=NZS11x10QNwC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=Cognitive+science+development+learning+analogy+capacity&ots=o_ZwPd9l6F&sig=L89Vll7PFlx4kP8dxxs0uWgYrII#PPR7,M1The)•Memory and Human Cognition By John T. E. Richardson (http://books.google.

ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=mBf217lUQpAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA89&dq=On+the+capacity+of+attention:+Its+estimation+and+its+role+in+working+memory+and+cognitive+aptitudes+&ots=nIx8MJ-O2t&sig=hYRl_bKEzPSjG3RZi0NNyhY2WDIWorking)•Enersen, O. D. (2009).

John Hughlings Jackson.

In: Who Named It. http://www.whonamedit.

com/doctor.

cfm/ 2766.

html Retrieved 14 August 2009•Society for Neuroscience. http://www.

sfn.

org/index.

cfm?pagename=about_sfn#timeline Retrieved 14 August2009•Keiji Tanaka,"Current Opinion in Neurobiology" ,(2007)

Cognitive neuroscience165•

Neural Computation

•

Neural Networks

•

Neural Systems

•

Neurobiology of Aging

•

Neurochemical Research

•

Neurocomputing

•

NeuroImage

•

Neuron

•

Neuropsychologia

•

Neuropsychology

•

Neuropsychopharmacology

•

NeuroReport

•

Neuroscience

•

Neuroscience Letters

•

Neuroscience Research

•

Optical Society of America

•

Otology and Neurotology

•

Perception

•

PLoS One

•

PLoS Biology

•

Psychological Science

•

Progress in Brain Research

•

Progress in Neurobiology

•

Psychological Review

•

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

•

Science

•

Social neuroscience

•

Synapse

•

Trends in Neurosciences

•

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

•

Vision

•

Vision Research

•

Visual Cognition

•

Visual Neuroscience

External links

•

Cognitive Neuroscience Society Homepage

(http://cogneurosociety.

org/)•

There's Something about Zero

(http://www.

in-mind.

org/issue-4/there-s-something-about-zero.

html)•

What Is Cognitive Neuroscience?, Jamie Ward/Psychology Press

(http://www.

cognitiveneurosciencearena.

com/ whatiscognitiveneuroscience.asp)•

goCognitive - Educational Tools for Cognitive Neuroscience (including video interviews)

(http://www.

gocognitive.

net)•

CogNet, The Brain and Cognitive Sciences Community Online, MIT

(http://cognet.

mit.

edu)•

Cognitive Neuroscience Arena, Psychology Press

(http://www.

cognitiveneurosciencearena.

com)•

Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, CUJCS, Spring 2002

(http://www.

neuroscience.

me/wp-content/uploads/ CUJCS-Spring_2002.

pdf)•

Whole Brain Atlas Top 100 Brain Structures

(http://www.

med.

harvard.

edu/AANLIB/cases/caseM/case.

html)•

Cognitive Neuroscience Discussion Group

(http://www.

neuroscienceforums.

com/cognitive-neuroscience)

Cognitive science166

Cognitive science

Figure illustrating the fields that contributed to the birth of cognitive science,including linguistics, education, neuroscience, artificial Intelligence, philosophy,anthropology, and psychology. Adapted from Miller, George A (2003). "Thecognitive revolution: a historical perspective".

TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences

7

.

Cognitive science

is the interdisciplinaryscientific study of mind and its processes. Itexamines what cognition is, what it does andhow it works. It includes research on howinformation is processed (in faculties suchas perception, language, memory, reasoning,and emotion), represented, and transformedin behaviour, (human or other animal)nervous system or machine (e.g., computer).Cognitive science consists of multipleresearch disciplines, including psychology,artificial intelligence, philosophy,neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology,sociology, and education.

[1]

It spans manylevels of analysis, from low-level learningand decision mechanisms to high-level logicand planning; from neural circuitry tomodular brain organization. The term

cognitive science

was coined by ChristopherLonguet-Higgins in his 1973 commentaryon the Lighthill report, which concerned thethen-current state of Artificial Intelligenceresearch.

[2]

In the same decade, the journal

Cognitive Science

and the Cognitive ScienceSociety were founded.

[3]

In 1982, VassarCollege became the first institution in theworld to grant an undergraduate degree in Cognitive Science.

[4]

History

Cognitive science has a pre-history traceable back to ancient Greek philosophical texts (see Plato's Meno); andcertainly must include writers such as Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Benedict de Spinoza, NicolasMalebranche, Pierre Cabanis, Leibniz and John Locke. But, although these early writers contributed greatly to thephilosophical discovery of mind and this would ultimately lead to the development of psychology, they wereworking with an entirely different set of tools and core concepts than those of the cognitive scientist.The modern culture of cognitive science can be traced back to the early cyberneticists in the 1930s and 1940s, suchas Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts, who sought to understand the organizing principles of the mind. McCullochand Pitts developed the first variants of what are now known as artificial neural networks, models of computationinspired by the structure of biological neural networks.Another precursor was the early development of the theory of computation and the digital computer in the 1940s and1950s. Alan Turing and John von Neumann were instrumental in these developments. The modern computer, or VonNeumann machine, would play a central role in cognitive science, both as a metaphor for the mind, and as a tool forinvestigation.

Cognitive science167In 1959, Noam Chomsky published a scathing review of B. F. Skinner's book Verbal Behavior. At the time,Skinner's behaviorist paradigm dominated psychology: Most psychologists focused on functional relations betweenstimulus and response, without positing internal representations. Chomsky argued that in order to explain language,we needed a theory like generative grammar, which not only attributed internal representations but characterizedtheir underlying order.In the 1970s and early 1980s, much cognitive science research focused on the possibility of artificial intelligence.Researchers such as Marvin Minsky would write computer programs in languages such as LISP to attempt toformally characterize the steps that human beings went through, for instance, in making decisions and solvingproblems, in the hope of better understanding human thought, and also in the hope of creating artificial minds. Thisapproach is known as "symbolic AI".Eventually thelimits of the symbolic AI research programbecame apparent. For instance, it seemed to be unrealistic to comprehensively list human knowledge in a form usable by a symbolic computer program. The late 80s and 90ssaw the rise of neural networks and connectionism as a research paradigm. Under this point of view, often attributedto James McClelland and David Rumelhart, the mind could be characterized as a set of complex associations,represented as a layered network. Critics argue that there are some phenomena which are better captured by symbolicmodels, and that connectionist models are often so complex as to have little explanatory power. Recently symbolicand connectionist models have been combined, making it possible to take advantage of both forms of explanation.

[5]

Principles

Levels of analysis

A central tenet of cognitive science is that a complete understanding of the mind/brain cannot be attained bystudying only a single level. An example would be the problem of remembering a phone number and recalling itlater. One approach to understanding thisprocess would be tostudy behavior through direct observation.A person could be presented with a phone number, asked to recall it after some delay. Then the accuracy of the response couldbe measured. Another approach would be to study the firings of individual neurons while a person is trying toremember thephone number. Neither of these experiments on their own would fully explain how the process of remembering a phone number works. Even if the technology to map out every neuron in the brain in real-time wereavailable, and it were known when each neuron was firing, it would still be impossible to know how a particularfiring of neurons translates into the observed behavior. Thus an understanding of how these two levels relate to eachother is needed. This can be provided by a functional level account of the process. Studying a particular phenomenonfrom multiple levels creates a better understanding of the processes that occur in the brain to give rise to a particularbehavior. Marr

[6]

gave a famous description of three levels of analysis:1.the

computational theory

, specifying the goals of the computation;2.

representation and algorithm

, giving a representation of the input and output and the algorithm which transformsone into the other; and3.the

hardware implementation

, how algorithm and representation may be physically realized.(See also the entry on functionalism.)

Interdisciplinary nature

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field with contributors from various fields, including psychology,neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy of mind, computer science, anthropology, sociology, and biology. Cognitivescience tends to view the world outside the mind much as other sciences do. Thus it too has an objective,observer-independent existence. The field is usually seen as compatible with the physical sciences, and uses thescientific method as well as simulation or modeling, often comparing the output of models with aspects of humanbehavior. Some doubt whether there is a unified cognitive science and prefer to speak of the cognitive sciences in

Cognitive science170

Learning and development

Learning and development are the processes by which we acquire knowledge and information over time. Infants areborn with little or no knowledge (depending on how knowledge is defined), yet they rapidly acquire the ability to uselanguage, walk, and recognize people and objects. Research in learning and development aims to explain themechanisms by which these processes might take place.A major question in the study of cognitive development is the extent to which certain abilities are innate or learned.This is often framed in terms of the nature versus nurture debate. The nativist view emphasizes that certain featuresare innate to an organism and aredetermined by itsgenetic endowment. The empiricist view, on the other hand, emphasizes that certain abilities are learned from the environment. Although clearly both genetic and environmentalinput is needed for a child to develop normally, considerable debate remains about

how

genetic information mightguide cognitive development. In the area of language acquisition, for example, some (such as Steven Pinker)

[11]

haveargued that specific information containing universal grammatical rules must be contained in the genes, whereasothers (such as Jeffrey Elman and colleagues in Rethinking Innateness) have argued that Pinker's claims arebiologically unrealistic. They argue that genes determine the architecture of a learning system, but that specific"facts" about how grammar works can only be learned as a result of experience.

Memory

Memory allows us to store information for later retrieval. Memory is often thought of consisting of both a long-termand short-term store. Long-term memory allows us to store information over prolonged periods (days, weeks, years).We do not yet know the practical limit of long-term memory capacity. Short-term memory allows us to storeinformation over short time scales (seconds or minutes).Memory is also often grouped into declarative and procedural forms. Declarative memory--grouped into subsets of semantic and episodic forms of memory--refers to our memory for facts and specific knowledge, specific meanings,and specific experiences (e.g., Who was the first president of the U.S.A.?, or "What did I eat for breakfast four daysago?). Procedural memory allows us to remember actions and motor sequences (e.g. how to ride a bicycle) and isoften dubbed implicit knowledge or memory .Cognitive scientists study memory just as psychologists do, but tend to focus in more on how memory bears oncognitive processes, and the interrelationship between cognition and memory. One example of this could be, whatmental processes does a person go through to retrieve a long-lost memory? Or, what differentiates between thecognitive process of recognition (seeing hints of something before remembering it, or memory in context) and recall(retrieving a memory, as in "fill-in-the-blank")?

Perception and action

The Necker cube, an example of anoptical illusion

Perception is the ability to take in information via the senses, and process it insome way. Vision and hearing are two dominant senses that allow us toperceive the environment. Some questions in the study of visual perception,for example, include: (1) How are we able to recognize objects?, (2) Why dowe perceive a continuous visual environment, even though we only see smallbits of it at any one time? One tool for studying visual perception is bylooking at how people process optical illusions. The image on the right of aNecker cube is an example of a bistable percept, that is, the cube can beinterpreted as being oriented in two different directions.The study of haptic (tactile), olfactory, and gustatory stimuli also fall into thedomain of perception.

Cognitive science171Action is taken to refer to the output of a system. In humans, this is accomplished through motor responses. Spatialplanning and movement, speech production, and complex motor movements are all aspects of action.

Research methods

Many different methodologies are used to study cognitive science. As the field is highly interdisciplinary, researchoften cuts across multiple areas of study, drawing on research methods from psychology, neuroscience, computerscience and systems theory.

Behavioral experiments

In order to have a description of what constitutes intelligent behavior, one must study behavior itself. This type of research is closely tied to that in cognitive psychology and psychophysics. By measuring behavioral responses todifferent stimuli, one can understand something about how those stimuli are processed. Lewandowski and Strohmetz(2009) review a collection of innovative uses of behavioral measurement in psychology including behavioral traces,behavioral observations, and behavioral choice.

[12]

Behavioral traces are pieces of evidence that indicate behavioroccurred, but the actor is not present (e.g., litter in a parking lot or readings on an electric meter). Behavioralobservations involve the direct witnessing of the actor engaging in the behavior (e.g., watching how close a personsits next to another person). Behavioral choices are when a person selects between two or more options (e.g., votingbehavior, choice of a punishment for another participant).•

Reaction time.

The time between the presentation of a stimulus and an appropriate response can indicatedifferences between two cognitive processes, and can indicate some things about their nature. For example, if in asearch task the reaction times vary proportionally with the number of elements, then it is evident that thiscognitive process of searching involves serial instead of parallel processing.•

Psychophysical responses.

Psychophysical experiments are an old psychological technique, which has beenadopted by cognitive psychology. They typically involve making judgments of some physical property, e.g. theloudness of a sound. Correlation of subjective scales between individuals can show cognitive or sensory biases ascompared to actual physical measurements. Some examples include:•sameness judgments for colors, tones, textures, etc.•threshold differences for colors, tones, textures, etc.•

Eye tracking.

This methodology is used to study a variety of cognitive processes, most notably visual perceptionand language processing. The fixation point of the eyes is linked to an individual's focus of attention. Thus, bymonitoring eye movements, we can study what information is being processed at a given time. Eye trackingallows us to study cognitive processes on extremely short time scales. Eye movements reflect online decisionmaking during a task, and they provide us with some insight into the ways in which those decisions may beprocessed.

Cognitive science172

Brain imaging

Image of the human head with the brain.The arrow indicates the position of thehypothalamus.

Brain imaging involves analyzing activity within the brain while performingvarious cognitive tasks. This allows us to link behavior and brain function tohelp understand how information is processed. Different types of imagingtechniques vary in their temporal (time-based) and spatial (location-based)resolution. Brain imaging is often used in cognitive neuroscience.•

Single photon emission computed tomography

and

Positron emissiontomography

. SPECT and PET use radioactive isotopes, which are injectedinto the subject's bloodstream and taken up by the brain. By observingwhich areas of the brain take up the radioactive isotope, we can see whichareas of the brain are more active than other areas. PET has similar spatialresolution to fMRI, but it has extremely poor temporal resolution.•

Electroencephalography

. EEG measures the electrical fields generated bylarge populations of neurons in the cortex by placing a series of electrodeson the scalp of the subject. This technique has an extremely high temporal resolution, but a relatively poor spatialresolution.•

Functional magnetic resonance imaging

. fMRI measures the relative amount of oxygenated blood flowing todifferent parts of the brain. More oxygenated blood in a particular region is assumed to correlate with an increasein neural activity in that part of the brain. This allows us to localize particular functions within different brainregions. fMRI has moderate spatial and temporal resolution.•

Optical imaging

. This technique uses infrared transmitters and receivers to measure the amount of lightreflectance by blood near different areas of the brain. Since oxygenated and deoxygenated blood reflects light bydifferent amounts, we can study which areas are more active (i.e., those that have more oxygenated blood).Optical imaging has moderate temporal resolution, but poor spatial resolution. It also has the advantage that it isextremely safe and can be used to study infants' brains.•

Magnetoencephalography.

MEG measures magnetic fields resulting from cortical activity. It is similar to EEG,except that it has improved spatial resolution since the magnetic fields it measures are not as blurred or attenuatedby the scalp, meninges and so forth as the electrical activity measured in EEG is. MEG uses SQUID sensors todetect tiny magnetic fields.

Computational modeling

A Neural network with two layers.

Computational models require a mathematically and logicallyformal representation of a problem. Computer models are used inthe simulation and experimental verification of different specificand general properties of intelligence. Computational modelingcan help us to understand the functional organization of aparticular cognitive phenomenon. There are two basic approachesto cognitive modeling. The first is focused on abstract mentalfunctions of an intelligent mind and operates using symbols, andthe second, which follows the neural and associative properties of the human brain, and is called subsymbolic.•

Symbolic modeling

evolved from the computer science paradigms using the technologies of Knowledge-basedsystems, as well as a philosophical perspective, see for example "Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence"(GOFAI). They are developed by the first cognitive researchers and later used in information engineering for

Cognitive science173expert systems . Since the early 1990s it was generalized in systemics for the investigation of functionalhuman-like intelligence models, such as personoids, and, in parallel, developed as the SOAR environment.Recently, especially in the context of cognitive decision making, symbolic cognitive modeling is extended tosocio-cognitive approach including social and organization cognition interrelated with a sub-symbolic notconscious layer.•

Subsymbolic modeling

includes

Connectionist/neural network models.

Connectionism relies on the idea that themind/brain is composed of simple nodes and that the power of the system comes primarily from the existence andmanner of connections between the simple nodes. Neural nets are textbook implementations of this approach.Some critics of this approach feel that while these models approach biological reality as a representation of howthe system works, they lack explanatory powers because complicated systems of connections with even simplerules are extremely complex and often less interpretable than the system they model.Other approaches gaining in popularity include the use of Dynamical systems theory and also techniques puttingsymbolic models and connectionist models into correspondence (Neural-symbolic integration). Bayesian models,often drawn from machine learning, are also gaining popularity.All the above approaches tend to be generalized to the form of integrated computational models of asynthetic/abstract intelligence, in order to be applied to the explanation and improvement of individual andsocial/organizational decision-making and reasoning.

Neurobiological methods

Research methods borrowed directly from neuroscience and neuropsychology can also help us to understand aspectsof intelligence. These methods allow us to understand how intelligent behavior is implemented in a physical system.•Single-unit recording•Direct brain stimulation•Animal models•Postmortem studies

Key findings

Cognitive science has much to its credit. Among other accomplishments, it has given rise to models of humancognitive bias and risk perception, and has been influential in the development of behavioral finance, part of economics. It has also given rise to a new theory of the philosophy of mathematics, and many theories of artificialintelligence, persuasion and coercion. It has made its presence firmly known in the philosophy of language andepistemology - a modern revival of rationalism - as well as constituting a substantial wing of modern linguistics.Fields of cognitive science have been influential in understanding the brain's particular functional systems (andfunctional deficits) ranging from speech production to auditory processing and visual perception. It has madeprogress in understanding how damage to particular areas of the brain affect cognition, and it has helped to uncoverthe root causes and results of specific disfunction, such as dyslexia, anopia, and hemispatial neglect.

Cognitive science174

Criticism

In a paper written shortly before his death, B.F. Skinner stated that "cognitive science is the creation science of psychology."

[13]

Notable researchers

Some of the more recognized names in cognitive science are usually either the most controversial or the most cited.Within philosophy familiar names include Daniel Dennett who writes from a computational systems perspective,John Searle known for his controversial Chinese Room, Jerry Fodor who advocates functionalism, and DouglasHofstadter, famous for writing

Gödel, Escher, Bach

, which questions the nature of words and thought. In the realmof linguistics, Noam Chomsky and George Lakoff have been influential (both have also become notable as politicalcommentators). In Artificial intelligence Marvin Minsky, Herbert Simon, Allen Newell, and Kevin Warwick areprominent. Popular names in the discipline of psychology include James McClelland and Steven Pinker.Anthropologists Dan Sperber, Edwin Hutchins, Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer and Joseph Henrich have been involved incollaborative projects with cognitive and social psychologists, political scientists and evolutionary biologists inattempts to develop general theories of culture formation, religion and political association.

References

[1]Thagard, Paul, Cognitive Science (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/archives/fall2008/entries/cognitive-science/), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).[2]Longuet-Higgins, H. C. (1973). "Comments on the Lighthill Report and the Sutherland Reply", in

Artificial Intelligence: a paper symposium

,Science Research Council, 35-37[3]Cognitive Science Society (http://www.cognitivesciencesociety.

org/about_description.

html)[4]http://cogsci.

vassar.

edu/about/index.html[5]Artur S. d'Avila Garcez, Luis C. Lamb and Dov M. Gabbay. Neural-Symbolic Cognitive Reasoning. Cognitive Technologies. Springer, 2008,ISBN 978-3-540-73245-7, 2008.[6]Marr, D. (1982).

Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information

. W. H.Freeman.[7]Miller, G. A. (2003). The cognitive revolution: a historical perspective. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 141-144.[8]A number of authors consider the qualia problem to be part of the cognitive science field, e.g. Some philosophical issues in cognitive science:qualia, intentionality, and the mind-body problem (http://portal.

acm.

org/citation.cfm?id=166791.

166844), Qualia: The Hard Problem(http://chil.

rice.

edu/byrne/Pubs/cogsci96.

pdf), and indeed the entire discipline of philosophy as being part of the cog sci field, e.g. Whatis Cognitive Science? (http://ls.

berkeley.

edu/ugis/cogsci/major/about.php), while other reputable sources that cover both qualia and cogsci do not draw any obvious connection between them, e.g. the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (http://plato.

stanford.

edu) (Jan 2008online edition) does have full-size articles on both qualia (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/qualia/) and cog sci (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/ entries/cognitive-science/), but qualia are not even mentioned in the cog sci article while cog sci is not mentioned in the qualia article.[9]http://www.

aaai.

org/AITopics/html/cogsci.html#simon[10]Sun, Ron (ed.) (2008). The Cambridge Handbook of Computational Psychology. Cambridge University Press, New York.[11]Pinker S., Bloom P. (1990). "Natural language and natural selection".

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

13

(4): 707

–

784.doi:10.1017/S0140525X00081061.[12]Lewandowski, Gary; Strohmetz, David (2009). "Actions can speak as loud as words: Measuring behavior in psychological science".

Socialand Personality Psychology Compass

3

(6): 992

–

1002. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2009.00229.[13]B. F. Skinner, "Can Psychology be a Science of Mind?",

American Psychologist

, November 1990, page 1209, At the APA Web Site (http:// psycnet.

apa.

org/journals/amp/45/11/1206.html) Successfully accessed 29 December 2009

Cognitive science175

Further reading

Introductory literature•Eckardt, Barbara Von (2003):

Cognitive Science: Philosophical Issues

. In: Lynn Nadel (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Vol. 1, London: Nature Publishing Group, pp. 552

–

559.•Thagard, Paul (2nd, 2005).

Mind : Introduction to Cognitive Science

. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.General•Bechtel, W. et al. Ed. (1999).

A Companion to Cognitive Science. Blackwell Companions to Philosophy

. Malden,MA: Blackwell Publishers.•Gardner, Howard (1987).

The Minds New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution

. New York: BasicBooks.•Gleitman, Lila R.; Mark Liberman (Eds.) (1995).

An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Vol. 1: Language

. The MITPress. ISBN 978-0262650441.•Isac, Daniela; Charles Reiss (2008).

I-language: An Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive Science

(http:// linguistics.

concordia.

ca/i-language/). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199534203.•Hutto, Daniel D. (2008).

Folk Psychological Narratives: The Sociocultural Basis of Understanding Reasons

. MITPress. ISBN 978-0-262-08367-6.•Sun, Ron (2008).

The Cambridge Handbook of Computational Psychology

. Cambridge University Press, NewYork. ISBN 0521857414.Classic texts•Chomsky, Noam (1965).

Aspects of the Theory of Syntax

. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-53007-1.•Churchland, Patricia Smith (1986).

Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain

. The MITPress. ISBN 978-0-262-03116-5.•Dennett, Daniel C. (1981).

Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology

. The MIT Press.ISBN 978-0-262-54037-7.•Fodor, Jerry A. (1983).

The Modularity of Mind

. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-56025-2.•Gazzaniga (ed.), Michael S. (2004).

The Cognitive Neurosciences III

. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-07254-0.•Glimcher, Paul W. (2003).

Decision, Uncertainty, and the Brain

. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-57227-9.•Minsky, Marvin L.; Seymour A. Papert (1969).

Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry

. TheMIT Press. ISBN 0-262-63111-2.•Noe, Alva (2005).

Action in Perception

. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-14088-1.•Putnam, Hilary (1988).

Representation and Reality

. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-66074-7.•Pylyshyn, Zenon (1986).

Computation and Cognition: Toward a Foundation for Cognitive Science

. The MITPress. ISBN 978-0-262-66058-7.•Rumelhart, David E.; James L. McClelland and the PDP Research Group (1987).

Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition

. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-63112-9.•Searle, John (1992).

The Rediscovery of the Mind

. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-69154-3.•Simon, Herbert A. (1970).

The Sciences of the Artificial

. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-69191-8.•Van Orman Quine, Willard (1964).

Word and Object

. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-67001-2.•Vygotsky, Lev (1962).

Thought and Language

. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-72010-6.•Wiener, Norbert (1948).

Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

. The MITPress. ISBN 978-0-262-73009-9.•Wilson, Robert Andrew; Keil, Frank C. (Eds.) (2001).

The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences(MITECS)

(http://books.

google.com/?id=-wt1aZrGXLYC&printsec=frontcover). Cambridge, Massachusetts:The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-73144-7.Definitions

Cognitive science176•Cognitive Science (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/cognitive-science) entry by Paul Thagard in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

•Cognitive Science - American Assoc. for Artificial Intelligence (http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/cogsci.html#simon)•aiKnow: Cognitive Artificial Intelligence (http://www.

aiknow.net)•MIT CogNet (http://cognet.

mit.

edu/)Miscellaneous•Baumgartner, P., et al. Eds. (1995).

Speaking Minds: Interviews With Twenty Eminent Cognitive Scientists.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.•Damasio, A. R. (1994).

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain.

New York: Grosset/Putnam.•Gazzaniga, M. S. Ed. (1996).

Conversations in the Cognitive Neurosciences.

New York: The MIT Press.•Hunt, M. (1982).

The Universe Within: A New Science Explores the Human Mind.

Brighton: The Harvester Press.•Lakoff, G and Johnson, M. (1999).

Philosophy In The Flesh.

New York: Basic Books.•Port, Robert F. and vanGelder, Tim (1995).

Mind as Motion: Explorations in the Dynamics of Cognition

.Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 0262161508 .•Sun, Ron & L. Bookman, (eds.), Computational Architectures Integrating Neural and Symbolic Processes.Kluwer Academic Publishers, Needham, MA. 1994.•Thelen, Esther and Smith, Linda B. (1996).

A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action

. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 026270059X .•Tsakiridis, George. Evagrius Ponticus and Cognitive Science: A Look at Moral Evil and the Thoughts. Eugene,OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010.Publications & publishers•The Journal of Cognitive Science (http://www.

cognitivesciencesociety.

org/)•Cognitive Science Journal Archive (http://www.

cogsci.

rpi.

edu/CSJarchive/): Archive of the

CognitiveScience

journal, plus conference proceedings and supplemental materials•Cognitive Systems Research (http://www.

elsevier.com/locate/cogsys)•WIREs Cognitive Science (http://wires.

wiley.

com/WileyCDA/WiresJournal/wisId-WCS.

html) - publicationaddressing the topic of cognitive science from a range of multi-disciplinary perspectives, combining the featuresof a review journal with an online reference work

External links

•Cognitive Science Society (http://www.cognitivesciencesociety.org)•University of California San Diego, Department of Cognitive Science (http://www.cogsci.

ucsd.

edu)•iCogSci: An online information portal of everything Cognitive Science (http://www.

cogs.

indiana.

edu/iacs/)•Cognitive Science Movie Index: A broad list of movies showcasing themes in the Cognitive Sciences (https:// www.

indiana.

edu/~cogfilms)•Piero Scaruffi's annotated bibliography on the mind (http://www.

scaruffi.

com/mind.html)•List of leading thinkers in cognitive science (http://carbon.

ucdenver.

edu/~mryder/itc/cogsci.html)•Dr. Roy Ruddle's history page at the University of Leeds (http://www.

comp.

leeds.

ac.

uk/ai12/history.

html)•Dr. Carl Stahmer's history page at the University of Santa Barbara (http://www.

carlstahmer.

com/cogsci/index.php)•Department of Cognitive Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (http://www.

hum.

huji.

ac.

il/english/ units.

php?cat=3046&incat=3045)•Cognitive Science Center Amsterdam (http://www.

csca.

nl)

Consciousness177

Consciousness

Representation of consciousness from theseventeenth century.

Consciousness

is a term that refers to the relationship between themind and the world with which it interacts.

[1]

It has been defined as:subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel,wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive controlsystem of the mind.

[2]

Despite the difficulty in definition, manyphilosophers believe that there is a broadly shared underlying intuitionabout what consciousness is.

[3]

As Max Velmans and Susan Schneiderwrote in

The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness

: "Anything thatwe are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness,making conscious experience at once the most familiar and mostmysterious aspect of our lives."

[4]

Philosophers since the time of Descartes and Locke have struggled tocomprehend the nature of consciousness and pin down its essentialproperties. Issues of concern in the philosophy of consciousnessinclude whether the concept is fundamentally valid; whetherconsciousness can ever be explained mechanistically; whethernon-human consciousness exists and if so how it can be recognized;how consciousness relates to language; and whether it may ever bepossible for computers or robots to be conscious. Perhaps the thorniestissue is whether consciousness can be understood in a way that does not require a dualistic distinction betweenmental and physical states or properties.At one time consciousness was viewed with skepticism by many scientists, but in recent years it has become asignificant topic of research in psychology and neuroscience. The primary focus is on understanding what it meansbiologically and psychologically for information to be present in consciousness

—

that is, on determining the neuraland psychological correlates of consciousness. The majority of experimental studies assess consciousness by askinghuman subjects for a verbal report of their experiences (e.g., "tell me if you notice anything when I do this"). Issuesof interest include phenomena such as subliminal perception, blindsight, denial of impairment, and altered states of consciousness produced by psychoactive drugs or spiritual or meditative techniques.In medicine, consciousness is assessed by observing a patient's arousal and responsiveness, and can be seen as acontinuum of states ranging from full alertness and comprehension, through disorientation, delirium, loss of meaningful communication, and finally loss of movement in response to painful stimuli.

[5]

Issues of practicalconcern include how the presence of consciousness can be assessed in severely ill, comatose, or anesthetized people,and how to treat conditions in which consciousness is impaired or disrupted.

[6]

Consciousness178

Etymology and early history

John Locke, British philosopher active inthe 17th century

The origin of the modern concept of consciousness is often attributed to JohnLocke's

Essay Concerning Human Understanding

, published in 1690.

[7]

Locke defined consciousness as

“

the perception of what passes in a man

’

sown mind.

”

[8]

His essay influenced the 18th century view of consciousness,and his definition appeared in Samuel Johnson's celebrated Dictionary(1755).

[9]

The earliest English language uses of "conscious" and "consciousness" dateback, however, to the 1500s. The English word "conscious" originally derivedfrom the Latin

conscius

(

con-

"together" +

scire

"to know"), but the Latinword did not have the same meaning as our word

—

it meant

knowing with

, inother words

having joint or common knowledge with another

.

[10]

There were,however, many occurrences in Latin writings of the phrase

conscius sibi

,which translates literally as "knowing with oneself", or in other words

sharingknowledge with oneself about something

. This phrase had the figurativemeaning of

knowing that one knows

, as the modern English word "conscious"does. In its earliest uses in the 1500s, the English word "conscious" retained the meaning of the Latin

conscius

. Forexample Thomas Hobbes in

Leviathan

wrote: "Where two, or more men, know of one and the same fact, they aresaid to be Conscious of it one to another."

[11]

The Latin phrase

conscius sibi

, whose meaning was more closelyrelated to the current concept of consciousness, was rendered in English as "conscious to oneself" or "conscious untooneself". For example, Archbishop Ussher wrote in 1613 of "being so conscious unto myself of my greatweakness".

[12]

Locke's definition from 1690 illustrates that a gradual shift in meaning had taken place.A related word was

conscientia

, which primarily means moral conscience. In the literal sense, "conscientia" meansknowledge-with, that is, shared knowledge. The word first appears in Latin juridical texts by writers such asCicero.

[13]

Here,

conscientia

is the knowledge that a witness has of the deed of someone else.

[14]

René Descartes(1596

–

1650) is generally taken to be the first philosopher to use "conscientia" in a way that does not fit thistraditional meaning.

[15]

Descartes used "conscientia" the way modern speakers would use "conscience." In

Searchafter Truth

he says "conscience or internal testimony" (

conscientia vel interno testimonio

).

[16]

In philosophy

The philosophy of mind has given rise to many stances regarding consciousness. Any attempt to impose anorganization on them is bound to be somewhat arbitrary. Stuart Sutherland exemplified the difficulty in the entry hewrote for the 1989 version of the

Macmillan Dictionary of Psychology

:

Consciousness

—

The having of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; awareness. The term is impossible todefine except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means. Many fall into thetrap of equating consciousness with self-consciousness

—

to be conscious it is only necessary to be aware of theexternal world. Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is,what it does, or why it has evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it.

[17]

Most writers on the philosophy of consciousness have been concerned to defend a particular point of view, and haveorganized their material accordingly. For surveys, the most common approach is to follow a historical path byassociating stances with the philosophers who are most most strongly associated with them, for example Descartes,Locke, Kant, etc. The main alternative, followed in the present article, is to organize philosophical stances accordingto the answers they give to a set of basic questions about the nature and status of consciousness.

Consciousness179

Is consciousness a valid concept?

The most compelling argument for the existence of consciousness is that the vast majority of mankind have anoverwhelming intuition that there truly is such a thing.

[18]

Skeptics argue that this intuition, in spite of its compellingquality, is false, either because the concept of consciousness is intrinsically incoherent, or because our intuitionsabout it are based in illusions. Gilbert Ryle, for example, argued that traditional understanding of consciousnessdepends on a Cartesian dualist outlook that improperly distinguishes between mind and body, or between mind andworld. He proposed that we speak not of minds, bodies, and the world, but of individuals, or persons, acting in theworld. Thus, by speaking of 'consciousness' we end up misleading ourselves by thinking that there is any sort of thing as consciousness separated from behavioral and linguistic understandings.

[19]

More generally, manyphilosophers and scientists have been unhappy about the difficulty of producing a definition that does not involvecircularity or fuzziness.

[17]

Is it a single thing?

Many philosophers have argued that consciousness is a unitary concept that is understood intuitively by the majorityof people in spite of the difficulty in defining it.

[20]

Others, though, have argued that the level of disagreement aboutthe meaning of the word indicates that it either means different things to different people, or else is an umbrella termencompassing a variety of distinct meanings with no simple element in common.

[21]

Ned Block proposed a distinction between two types of consciousness that he called

phenomenal

(P-consciousness)and

access

(A-consciousness).

[22]

P-consciousness, according to Block, is simply raw experience: it is moving,colored forms, sounds, sensations, emotions and feelings with our bodies and responses at the center. Theseexperiences, considered independently of any impact on behavior, are called

qualia

. A-consciousness, on the otherhand, is the phenomenon whereby information in our minds is accessible for verbal report, reasoning, and the controlof behavior. So, when we perceive, information about what we perceive is access conscious; when we introspect,information about our thoughts is access conscious; when we remember, information about the past is accessconscious, and so on. Although some philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett, have disputed the validity of thisdistinction,

[23]

others have broadly accepted it. David Chalmers has argued that A-consciousness can in principle beunderstood in mechanistic terms, but that understanding P-consciousness is much more challenging: he calls this the

hard problem of consciousness

.

[24]

Some philosophers believe that Block's two types of consciousness are not the end of the story. William Lycan, forexample, argued in his book

Consciousness and Experience

that at least eight clearly distinct types of consciousnesscan be identified (organism consciousness; control consciousness; consciousness

of

; state/event consciousness;reportability; introspective consciousness; subjective consciousness; self-consciousness)

—

and that even this listomits several more obscure forms.

[25]

Consciousness180

How does it relate to the physical world?

Illustration of dualism by René Descartes. Inputs arepassed by the sensory organs to the pineal gland andfrom there to the immaterial spirit.

The first influential philosopher to discuss this questionspecifically was Descartes, and the answer he gave is known asCartesian dualism. Descartes proposed that consciousness resideswithin an immaterial domain he called res cogitans (the realm of thought), in contrast to the domain of material things which hecalled res extensa (the realm of extension).

[26]

He suggested thatthe interaction between these two domains occurs inside the brain,perhaps in a small midline structure called the pineal gland.

[27]

Although it is widely accepted that Descartes explained theproblem cogently, few later philosophers have been happy with hissolution, and his ideas about the pineal gland have especially beenridiculed.

[28]

Alternative solutions, however, have been verydiverse. They can be divided broadly into two categories: dualistsolutions that maintain Descartes's rigid distinction between therealm of consciousness and the realm of matter but give differentanswers for how the two realms relate to each other; and monistsolutions that maintain that there is really only one realm of being,of which consciousness and matter are both aspects. Each of thesecategories itself contains numerous variants. The two main typesof dualism are substance dualism (which holds that the mind is formed of a distinct type of substance not governedby the laws of physics) and property dualism (which holds that the laws of physics are universally valid but cannotbe used to explain the mind). The three main types of monism are physicalism (which holds that the mind consists of matter organized in a particular way), idealism (which holds that only thought truly exists and matter is merely anillusion), and neutral monism (which holds that both mind and matter are aspects of a distinct essence that is itself identical to neither of them). There are also, however, a large number of idiosyncratic theories that cannot cleanly beassigned to any of these camps.

[29]

Since the dawn of Newtonian science with its vision of simple mechanical principles governing the entire universe,some philosophers have been tempted by the idea that consciousness could be explained in purely physical terms.The first influential writer to propose such an idea explicitly was Julien Offray de La Mettrie, in his book Man aMachine (

L'homme machine

). His arguments, however, were very abstract.

[30]

The most influential modern physicaltheories of consciousness are based on psychology and neuroscience. Theories proposed by neuroscientists such asGerald Edelman

[31]

and Antonio Damasio,

[32]

and by philosophers such as Daniel Dennett,

[33]

seek to explainconsciousness in terms of neural events occurring within the brain. Many other neuroscientists, such as Christof Koch,

[34]

have explored the neural basis of consciousness without attempting to frame all-encompassing globaltheories. At the same time, computer scientists working in the field of Artificial Intelligence have pursued the goal of creating digital computer programs that can simulate or embody consciousness.

[35]

A few theoretical physicists have argued that classical physics is intrinsically incapable of explaining the holisticaspects of consciousness, but that quantum theory provides the missing ingredients. Several theorists have thereforeproposed quantum mind (QM) theories of consciousness. Notable theories falling into this category include theHolonomic brain theory of Karl Pribram and David Bohm, and the Orch-OR theory formulated by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. Some of these QM theories offer descriptions of phenomenal consciousness, as well as QMinterpretations of access consciousness. None of the quantum mechanical theories has been confirmed byexperiment, and many scientists and philosophers consider the arguments for an important role of quantumphenomena to be unconvincing.

[36]

Consciousness181

Why do people believe that other people are conscious?

Many philosophers consider experience to be the essence of consciousness, and believe that experience can onlyfully be known from the inside, subjectively. But if consciousness is subjective and not visible from the outside, whydo the vast majority of people believe that other people are conscious, but rocks and trees are not?

[37]

This is calledthe problem of other minds.

[38]

It is particularly acute for people who believe in the possibility of philosophicalzombies, that is, people who think it is possible in principle to have an entity that is physically indistinguishable froma human being and behaves like a human being in every way but nevertheless lacks consciousness.

[39]

The most commonly given answer is that we attribute consciousness to other people because we see that they resemble us in appearance and behavior: wereason that if they look like us and act like us, they must be like us inother ways, including having experiences of the sort that we do.

[40]

There are, however, a variety of problems withthat explanation. For one thing, it seems to violate the principle of parsimony, by postulating an invisible entity thatis not necessary to explain what we observe.

[40]

Some philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett in an essay titled

TheUnimagined Preposterousness of Zombies

, argue that people who give this explanation do not really understand whatthey are saying.

[41]

More broadly, philosophers who do not accept the possibility of zombies generally believe thatconsciousness is reflected in behavior (including verbal behavior), and that we attribute consciousness on the basis of behavior. A more straightforward way of saying this is that we attribute experiences to people because of what theycan

do

, including the fact that they can tell us about their experiences.

[42]

How can we know whether non-human animals are conscious?

The topic of animal consciousness is beset by a number of difficulties. It poses the problem of other minds in anespecially severe form, because animals, lacking language, cannot tell us about their experiences.

[43]

Also, it isdifficult to reason objectively about the question, because a denial that an animal is conscious is often taken to implythat it does not feel, its life has no value, and that harming it is not morally wrong. Descartes, for example, hassometimes been blamed for mistreatment of animals due to the fact that he believed only humans have anon-physical mind.

[44]

Most people have a strong intuition that some animals, such as dogs, are conscious, whileothers, such as insects, are not; but the sources of this intuition are not obvious.

[43]

Philosophers who consider subjective experience the essence of consciousness also generally believe, as a correlate, that the existence and natureof animal consciousness can never rigorously be known. Thomas Nagel spelled out thispoint of view in an influential essay titled

What Is it Like to Be a Bat?

. He said that an organism is conscious "if andonly if there is something that it is like to be that organism

—

something it is like

for

the organism"; and he arguedthat no matter how much we know about an animal's brain and behavior, we can never really put ourselves into themind of the animal and experience its world in the way it does itself.

[45]

Other thinkers, such as Douglas Hofstadter,dismiss this argument as incoherent.

[46]

Several psychologists and ethologists have argued for the existence of animal consciousness by describing a range of behaviors that appear to show animals holding beliefs about thingsthey cannot directly perceive

—

Donald Griffin's 2001 book

Animal Minds

reviews a substantial portion of theevidence.

[47]

Could a machine ever be conscious?

The idea of an artifact made conscious is an ancient theme of mythology, appearing for example in the Greek mythof Pygmalion, who carved a statue that was magically brought to life, and in medieval Jewish stories of the Golem, amagically animated homunculus built of clay.

[48]

However, the possibility of actually constructing a consciousmachine was probably first discussed by Ada Lovelace, in a set of notes written in 1842 about the Analytical Engineinvented by Charles Babbage, a precursor (never built) to modern electronic computers. Lovelace was essentiallydismissive of the idea that a machine such as the Analytical Engine could think in a humanlike way. She wrote:It is desirable to guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of theAnalytical Engine. ... The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to

originate

anything. It can do

Consciousness182whatever we

know how to order it

to perform. It can

follow

analysis; but it has no power of

anticipating

anyanalytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making

available

what we are already acquaintedwith.

[49]

One of the most influential contributions to this question was an essay written in 1950 by pioneering computerscientist Alan Turing, titled

Computing Machinery and Intelligence

. Turing disavowed any interest in terminology,saying that even "Can machines think?" is too loaded with spurious connotations to be meaningful; but he proposedto replace all such questions with a specific operational test, which has become known as the Turing test.

[50]

To passthe test a computer must be able to imitate a human well enough to fool interrogators. In his essay Turing discussed avariety of possible objections, and presented a counterargument to each of them. The Turing test is commonly citedin discussions of artificial intelligence as a proposed criterion for machine consciousness; it has provoked a greatdeal of philosophical debate. For example, Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter argue that anything capable of passing the Turing test is necessarily conscious,

[51]

while David Chalmers argues that a philosophical zombie couldpass the test, yet fail to be conscious.

[52]

Some philosophers have argued that it might be possible, at least in principle,for a machine to be conscious, but thatthis would not just be a matter of executing the right computer program. This viewpoint has most notably beenadvocated by John Searle, who defended it using a thought experiment that has become known as the Chinese roomargument: Suppose the Turing test is conducted in Chinese rather than English, and suppose a computer programsuccessfully passes it. Does the system that is executing the program understand Chinese? Searle's argument is thathe could pass the Turing test in Chinese too, by executing exactly the same program as the computer, yet withoutunderstanding a word of Chinese. How does Searle know whether he understands Chinese? Understanding alanguage is not just something you

do

: it

feels like something

to understand Chinese (or any language).Understanding is conscious, and therefore there is more to it than merely executing a program, even aTuring-test-passing program.

[53]

In the literature concerning artificial consciousness, Searle's essay has been second only to Turing's in the volume of debate it has generated.

[53]

Searle himself was vague about what extra ingredients it would take to make a machineconscious: all he proposed was that what was needed was "causal powers" of the sort that the brain has and thatcomputers lack. But other thinkers sympathetic to his basic argument have suggested that the necessary (thoughperhaps still not sufficient) extra conditions may include the ability to pass not just the verbal version of the Turingtest, but the robotic version,

[54]

which requires grounding the robot's words in the robot's sensorimotor capacity tocategorize and interact with the things in the world that its words are about, Turing-indistinguishably from a realperson. Turing-scale robotics is an empirical branch of research on embodied cognition and situated cognition

[55]

Spiritual approaches

To most philosophers, the word "consciousness" connotes the relationship between the mind and the world. Towriters on spiritual or religious topics, it frequently connotes the relationship between the mind and God, or therelationship between the mind and deeper truths that are thought to be more fundamental than the physical world.Krishna consciousness, for example, is a term used to mean an intimate linkage between the mind of a worshipperand the god Krishna.

[56]

The mystical psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke distinguished between three types of consciousness:

Simple Consciousness

, awareness of the body, possessed by many animals;

Self Consciousness

,awareness of being aware, possessed only by humans; and

Cosmic Consciousness

, awareness of the life and order of the universe, possessed only by humans who are enlightened.

[57]

Many more examples could be given. The mostthorough account of the spiritual approach may be Ken Wilber's book

The Spectrum of Consciousness

, a comparisonof western and eastern ways of thinking about the mind. Wilber described consciousness as a spectrum with ordinaryawareness at one end, and more profound types of awareness at higher levels.

[58]

Consciousness183

Scientific approaches

For many decades, consciousness as a research topic was avoided by the majority of mainstream scientists, becauseof a general feeling that a phenomenon defined in subjective terms could not properly be studied using objectiveexperimental methods.

[59]

Starting in the 1980s, though, an expanding community of neuroscientists andpsychologists have associated themselves with a field called

Consciousness Studies

, giving rise to a stream of experimental work published in journals such as Consciousness and Cognition, and methodological work publishedin journals such as the Journal of Consciousness Studies, along with regular conferences organized by groups such asthe Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness.

[60]

Modern scientific investigations into consciousness are based on psychological experiments (including, for example,the investigation of priming effects using subliminal stimuli), and on case studies of alterations in consciousnessproduced by trauma, illness, or drugs. Broadly viewed, scientific approaches are based on two core concepts. Thefirst identifies the content of consciousness with the experiences that are reported by human subjects; the secondmakes use of the concept of consciousness that has been developed by neurologists and other medical professionalswho deal with patients whose behavior is impaired. In either case, the ultimate goals are to develop techniques forassessing consciousness objectively in humans as well as other animals, and to understand the neural andpsychological mechanisms that underlie it.

[34]

Measurement

The Necker Cube, an ambiguous image

Experimental research on consciousness presents special difficulties, due tothe lack of a universally accepted operational definition. In the majority of experiments that are specifically about consciousness, the subjects are human,and the criterion that is used is verbal report: in other words, subjects areasked to describe their experiences, and their descriptions are treated asobservations of the contents of consciousness.

[61]

For example, subjects whostare continuously at a Necker Cube usually report that they experience it"flipping" between two 3D configurations, even though the stimulus itself remains the same.

[62]

The objective is to understand the relationship betweenthe conscious awareness of stimuli (as indicated by verbal report) and theeffects the stimuli have on brain activity and behavior. In several paradigms,such as the technique of response priming, the behavior of subjects is clearly influenced by stimuli for which theyreport no awareness.

[63]

Verbal report is widely considered to be the most reliable indicator of consciousness, but it raises a number of issues.

[64]

Forone thing, if verbal reports are treated as observations, akin to observations in other branches of science, then the possibility arises that they may contain errors

—

but it is difficult to make sense of the idea thatsubjects could be wrong about their own experiences, and even more difficult to see how such an error could bedetected.

[65]

Daniel Dennett has argued for an approach he calls heterophenomenology, which means treating verbalreports as stories that may or may not be true, but his ideas about how to do this have not been widely adopted.

[66]

Another issue with verbal report as a criterion is that it restricts the field of study to humans who have language: thisapproach cannot be used to study consciousness in other species, pre-linguistic children, or people with types of brain damage that impair language. As a third issue, philosophers who dispute the validity of the Turing test may feelthat it is possible, at least in principle, for verbal report to be dissociated from consciousness entirely: a philosophicalzombie may give detailed verbal reports of awareness in the absence of any genuine awareness.

[67]

Although verbal report is in practice the "gold standard" for ascribing consciousness, it is not the only possiblecriterion.

[64]

In medicine, consciousness is assessed as a combination of verbal behavior, arousal, brain activity andpurposeful movement. The last three of these can be used as indicators of consciousness when verbal behavior is

Consciousness184absent.

[68]

The scientific literature regarding the neural bases of arousal and purposeful movement is very extensive.Their reliability as indicators of consciousness is disputed, however, due to numerous studies showing that alerthuman subjects can be induced to behave purposefully in a variety of ways in spite of reporting a complete lack of awareness.

[63]

Studies of the neuroscience of free will have also shown that the experiences that people report whenthey behave purposefully sometimes do not correspond to their actual behaviors or to the patterns of electricalactivity recorded from their brains.

[69]

Another approach applies specifically to the study of self-awareness, that is, the ability to distinguish oneself fromothers. In the 1970s Gordon Gallup developed an operational test for self-awareness, known as the mirror test. Thetest examines whether animals are able to differentiate between seeing themselves in a mirror versus seeing otheranimals. The classic example involves placing a spot of coloring on the skin or fur near the individual's forehead andseeing if they attempt to remove it or at least touch the spot, thus indicating that they recognize that the individualthey are seeing in the mirror is themselves.

[70]

Humans (older than 18 months) and other great apes, bottlenosedolphins, pigeons, and elephants have all been observed to pass this test.

[71]

Neural correlates

Schema of the neural processes underlying consciousness, from Christof Koch

A major part of the scientific literatureon consciousness consists of studiesthat examine the relationship betweenthe experiences reported by subjectsand the activity that simultaneouslytakes place in their brains

—

that is,studies of the neural correlates of consciousness. The hope is to find thatactivity in a particular part of the brain,or a particular pattern of global brainactivity, will be strongly predictive of conscious awareness. Several brain imaging techniques, such as EEG andfMRI, have been used for physical measures of brain activity in these studies.

[72]

One idea that has drawn attention for several decades is that consciousness is associated with high-frequency(gamma band) EEG oscillations. This idea arose from proposals in the 1980s, by Christof von der Malsburg andWolf Singer, that gamma oscillations could solve the so-called binding problem, by linking information representedin different parts of the brain into a unified experience.

[73]

Rodolfo Llinás, for example, proposed that consciousnessresults from recurrent thalamo-cortical resonance where the specific thalamocortical systems (content) and thenon-specific (centromedial thalamus) thalamocortical systems (context) interact in the gamma band frequency viatemporal coincidence.

[74]

A number of studies have shown that activity in primary sensory areas of the brain is not suf ficient to produceconsciousness: it is possible for subjects to report a lack of awareness even when areas such as the primary visualcortex show clear electrical responses to a stimulus.

[75]

Higher brain areas are seen as more promising, especially theprefrontal cortex, which is involved in a range of higher cognitive functions collectively known as executivefunctions. There is substantial evidence that a "top-down" flow of neural activity (i.e., activity propagating from thefrontal cortex to sensory areas) is more predictive of conscious awareness than a "bottom-up" flow of activity.

[76]

The prefrontal cortex is not the only candidate area, however: studies by Nikos Logothetis and his colleagues haveshown, for example, that visually responsive neurons in parts of the temporal lobe reflect the visual perception in thesituation when conflicting visual images are presented to different eyes (i.e., bistable percepts during binocularrivalry).

[77]

Consciousness185

Biological function and evolution

Regarding the primary function of conscious processing, a recurring idea in recent theories is that phenomenal statessomehow integrate neural activities and information-processing that would otherwise be independent.

[78]

This hasbeen called the

integration consensus

. However, it remains unspecified which kinds of information are integrated ina conscious manner and which kinds can be integrated without consciousness. Nor is it explained what specificcausal role conscious integration plays, nor why the same functionality cannot be achieved without consciousness.Obviously not all kinds of information are capable of being disseminated consciously (e.g., neural activity related tovegetative functions, reflexes, unconscious motor programs, low-level perceptual analyses, etc.) and many kinds of information can be disseminated and combined with other kinds without consciousness, as in intersensoryinteractions such as the ventriloquism effect. Hence it remains unclear why any of it is conscious.

[79]

As noted earlier, even among writers who consider consciousness to be a well-defined thing, there is widespreaddispute about which animals other than humans can be said to possess it.

[80]

Thus, any examination of the evolutionof consciousness is faced with great difficulties. Nevertheless, some writers have argued that consciousness can beviewed from the standpoint of evolutionary biology as an adaptation in the sense of a trait that increases fitness.

[81]

In his paper "Evolution of consciousness," John Eccles argued that special anatomical and physical properties of themammalian cerebral cortex gave rise to consciousness.

[82]

Bernard Baars proposed that once in place, this"recursive" circuitry may have provided a basis for the subsequent development of many of the functions thatconsciousness facilitates in higher organisms.

[83]

Other philosophers, however, have suggested that consciousness would not be necessary for any functionaladvantage in evolutionary processes.

[84]

No one has given a causal explanation, they argue, of why it would not bepossible for a functionally equivalent non-conscious organism (i.e., a philosophical zombie) to achieve the very samesurvival advantages as a conscious organism. If evolutionary processes are blind to the difference between function

F

being performed by conscious organism

O

and non-conscious organism

O*

, it is unclear what adaptive advantageconsciousness could provide.

[85]

States of consciousness

A Buddhist monk meditating

There are some states in which consciousness seems to be abolished,including sleep, coma, and death. There are also a variety of circumstancesthat can change the relationship between the mind and the world in lessdrastic ways, producing what are known as altered states of consciousness.Some altered states occur naturally; others can be produced by drugs or braindamage.

[86]

The two most widely accepted altered states are sleep and dreaming.Although dream sleep and non-dream sleep appear very similar to an outsideobserver, each is associated with a distinct pattern of brain activity, metabolicactivity, and eye movement; each is also associated with a distinct pattern of experience and cognition. During ordinary non-dream sleep, people who areawakened report only vague and sketchy thoughts, and their experiences donot cohere into a continuous narrative. During dream sleep, in contrast,people who are awakened report rich and detailed experiences in which events form a continuous progression, whichmay however be interrupted by bizarre or fantastic intrusions. Thought processes during the dream state frequentlyshow a high level of irrationality. Both dream and non-dream states are associated with severe disruption of memory:it usually disappears in seconds during the non-dream state, and in minutes after awakening from a dream unlessactively refreshed.

[87]

Consciousness186A variety of psychoactive drugs have notable effects on consciousness. These range from a simple dulling of awareness produced by sedatives, to increases in the intensity of sensory qualities produced by stimulants, cannabis,or most notably by the class of drugs known as psychedelics.

[86]

LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, and others in this groupcan produce major distortions of perception, including hallucinations; some users even describe their drug-inducedexperiences as mystical or spiritual in quality. The brain mechanisms underlying these effects are not wellunderstood, but there is substantial evidence that alterations in the brain system that uses the chemicalneurotransmitter serotonin play an essential role.

[88]

There has been some research into physiological changes in yogis and people who practise various techniques of meditation. Some research with brain waves during meditation has differences between those corresponding toordinary relaxation and those corresponding to meditation. It has been disputed, however, whether there is enoughevidence to count these as physiologically distinct states of consciousness.

[89]

The most extensive study of the characteristics of altered states of consciousness was made by psychologist Charles Tart in the 1960s and 1970s. Tart analyzed a state of consciousness as madeup of anumber of component processes, including exteroception (sensing the external world); interoception (sensing the body); input-processing (seeingmeaning); emotions; memory; time sense; sense of identity; evaluation and cognitive processing; motor output; andinteraction with the environment.

[90]

Each of these, in his view, could be altered in multiple ways by drugs or othermanipulations. The components that Tart identified have not, however, been validated by empirical studies. Researchin this area has not yet reached firm conclusions, but a recent questionnaire-based study identified eleven significantfactors contributing to drug-induced states of consciousness: experience of unity; spiritual experience; blissful state;insightfulness; disembodiment; impaired control and cognition; anxiety; complex imagery; elementary imagery;audio-visual synesthesia; and changed meaning of percepts.

[91]

Phenomenology

Phenomenology is a method of inquiry that attempts to examinethe structure of consciousness in its own right, putting aside problems regarding the relationship of consciousness to the physical world. This approach was firstproposed by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, and later elaborated by other philosophers and scientists.

[92]

Husserl'soriginal concept gave rise to two distinct lines of inquiry, in philosophy and psychology. In philosophy,phenomenology has largely been devoted to fundamental metaphysical questions, such as the nature of intentionality(

"aboutness"

). In psychology, phenomenology largely has meant attempting to investigate consciousness using themethod of introspection, which means looking into one's own mind and reporting what one observes. This methodfell into disrepute in the early twentieth century because of grave doubts about its reliability, but has beenrehabilitated to some degree, especially when used in combination with techniques for examining brain activity.

[93]Neon color spreading effect. Theapparent bluish tinge of the white areasinside the circle is an illusion.

Introspectively, the world of conscious experience seems to have considerablestructure. Immanuel Kant asserted that the world as we perceive it isorganized according to a set of fundamental "intuitions", which include

object

(we perceive the world as a set of distinct things);

shape

;

quality

(color,warmth, etc.);

space

(distance, direction, and location); and

time

.

[94]

Some of these constructs, such as space and time, correspond to the way the world isstructured by the laws of physics; for others the correspondence is not asclear. Understanding the physical basis of qualities, such as redness or pain,has been particularly challenging. David Chalmers has called this the

hard problem of consciousness

.

[24]

Some philosophers have argued that it isintrinsically unsolvable, because qualities (

"qualia"

) are ineffable; that is,they are "raw feels", incapable of being analyzed into component

Consciousness189

The stream of consciousness

William James is usually credited with popularizing the idea that human consciousness flows like a stream, in his

Principles of Psychology

of 1890. According to James, the "stream of thought" is governed by five characteristics:"(1) Every thought tends to be part of a personal consciousness. (2) Within each personal consciousness thought isalways changing. (3) Within each personal consciousness thought is sensibly continuous. (4) It always appears todeal with objects independent of itself. (5) It is interested in some parts of these objects to the exclusion of others".

[112]

A similar concept appears in Buddhist philosophy, expressed by the Sanskrit term

Citta-saṃtāna

, whichis usually translated as mindstream or "mental continuum". In the Buddhist view, though, the "mindstream" isviewed primarily as a source of noise that distracts attention from a changeless underlying reality.

[113]

In the west, the primary impact of the idea has been on literature rather than science: stream of consciousness as anarrative mode means writing in a way that attempts to portray the moment-to-moment thoughts and experiences of a character. This technique perhaps had its beginnings in the monologues of Shakespeare's plays, and reached itsfullest development in the novels of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, although it has also been used by many othernoted writers.

[114]

Here for example is a passage from Joyce's Ulysses about the thoughts of Molly Bloom:Yes becausehe never dida thing like that before as ask to get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the City Arms hotel when he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing his highness to makehimself interesting for that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he thought he had a great leg of and she never left us afarthing all for masses for herself and her soul greatest miser ever was actually afraid to lay out 4d for hermethylated spirit telling me all her ailments she had too much old chat in her about politics and earthquakesand the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first God help the world if all the women were her sort downon bathingsuits and lownecks of course nobody wanted her to wear them I suppose she was pious because noman would look at her twice I hope Ill never be like her a wonder she didnt want us to cover our faces but shewas a welleducated woman certainly and her gabby talk about Mr Riordan here and Mr Riordan there Isuppose he was glad to get shut of her.

[115]

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imprint.

co.uk/jcs.

html)•

Psyche

(http://www.

theassc.

org/journal_psyche) (ASSC)

Dependent origination193

Dependent origination

Part of a series on

Buddhism

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Dependent origination

or

dependent arising

(from Sanskrit:

प् रतीत् यसम ु त् पाद

,

pratītyasamutpāda

;Pali:

paticcasamuppāda

; Tibetan:

རྟེན་ཅིང་འབྲེལ་བར་འབྱུང་བ་

, Wylie:

rten cing 'brel bar 'byung ba

; Chinese:

緣起

;pinyin:

yuánqǐ

) is a cardinal doctrine of Buddhism, and arguably the only thing that holds every Buddhist teachingtogether fromTheravada to Dzogchen to the extinct schools.

[1]

As aconceptand a doctrineit has a general and a specific application, both being integral to Buddhist philosophy. The first, which may be considered the general or universal definition - whichis emphasised inMahayana Buddhism (particularly the Hua Yen school) - states that all phenomena are arising together in a mutually interdependent web of cause and effect.

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

Theinterdependence and mutual conditioning of phenomena is, according to Buddhist philosophy, a critical dimension of the universal natural law which makes liberation possible. The Buddha applied this general truth of causalinterdependence to the problem of human suffering and formulated a twelve part chain showing the causal relationsbetween the psychophysical phenomena that sustain dukkha (dissatisfaction) in worldly experience.

[6]

This specificapplication of the universal truth of mutual interdependence is an analysis and explication of the second Noble Truth.It is variously rendered into English as "dependent origination",

[7]

[8]

[9]

"dependent arising",

[10]

"conditioned

Dependent origination194genesis", "dependent co-arising",

[11]

[12]

and "interdependent arising"

[13]

Overview

Causal dependence provides structure to the universe in Buddhism. Effects automatically proceed from their causesin an impersonal lawlike manner.

[14]

Thus an intelligent agent, like a Creator, is not necessary. In fact it is impossiblefor such an uncaused principle to interact with our universe which runs on causal dependence.

[15]

Due to the lawlikebehavior of causation, Pratītyasamutpāda gives rise to every other doctrine in Buddhism including rebirth, samsara,dukkha, sunyata etc. Dependent origination provides that sentient beings are mere conceptual constructs designatedupon bundles of causes and conditions, that is aggregates.

[16]

It is important to note that the root cause of dukkha inthe famous Twelve Nidānas is ignorance (Avijjā) of dependent origination, and not craving (Taṇhā).

[17]

Some scholars believe that pratītyasamutpāda is Buddhist metaphysics,

[18]

but it has no relevance to cosmology(origin and nature of the universe), theology, or an absolutist (absolute soul, self, etc.) or relativistic philosophy.

[19]

However, a small part of metaphysics deals with the apparent contradiction, or paradox, between free will and theposition that worldly phenomena are solely a consequence of natural causal factors.

[20]

In so far as it resolves thisparadox, we can perhaps call pratītyasamutpāda a

metaphysic of volitions (or karma)

.

[21]

[22]

Understanding therelationships between the phenomena that sustain dukkha

[23]

is said to lead to complete freedom from samsara,(nibbana).

[24]

Pratītyasamutpāda in Theravāda Buddhist sources

The Twelve Nidānas in the Pali Canon

In the Pali Suttapitaka (the most ancient canon of Buddhist writing preserved by Theravāda tradition) the first(partial) exposition of the twelve nidānas appears in the Dīgha Nikāya (Long Discourses), Brahmajāla Sutta, verse3.71.

[25]

The reference is partial because it does not cover all twelve links:

[26]

" In this same Nikāya, Sutta 14describes ten links instead of twelve, and in Sutta 15 the links are described, but without the six sense-bases (for atotal of nine links in that Sutta).

[27]

...they experience these feelings by repeated contact through the six sense-bases; feeling conditions craving;craving conditions clinging; clinging conditions becoming; becoming conditions birth; birth conditions agingand death, sorrow, lamentation, sadness and distress.Descriptions of the full sequence of twelve links can be found elsewhere in the Pali canon, for instance in section 12of the Samyutta Nikaya:

[28]

Now from the remainderless fading and cessation of that very ignorance comes the cessation of fabrications ...From the cessation of birth, then aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair all cease. Suchis the cessation of this entire mass of stress and suffering.

Dependent origination195

The Twelve Nidānas in the Theravāda commentaries

In the commentarial literature of the Theravada tradition (attributed, at least mythically, to the author Buddhaghosa,and written many centuries subsequent to the Suttapitaka passages described above) the same doctrine is insteadinterpreted as a sequence of three lives, thus shifting the theme from a single conception (and birth) to a sequence of "incarnations" (roughly speaking).

[29]

The causality of dukkha

Phenomena are sustained only so long as their sustaining factors remain.

[30]

This causal relationship is expressed inits most general form as follows:

[31]

When this exists, that comes to be. With the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does notcome to be. With the cessation of this, that ceases.

—

Samyutta Nikaya 12.61

[32]

This natural law of

this/that causality

is independent of being discovered, just like the laws of physics.

[33]

Inparticular, the Buddha applied this law of causality to determine the cause of

dukkha

.

[34]

Cause EffectComments[35]

Birth

- (Jāti)

Aging, death, and this entiremass of

dukkha) -(Jarāmaraṇa)Birth[36]is any coming-to-be or coming-forth. It refers not just to birth at thebeginning of a lifetime, but to birth as new person, acquisition of a new status orposition etc.

Becoming

- (Bhava)

Birth

- (Jāti)These three are becoming: sensual becoming,[37]form becoming,[38]formlessbecoming[39]

Clinging/sustenance

-(Upādāna)

Becoming

(Bhava)These four are clingings:

sensual clinging

,[40]

view clinging

,[41]

practiceclinging

,[42]and

self clinging

[43]

Craving

- (Taṇhā)

Clinging/sustenance

-(Upādāna)There are these six forms of cravings: cravings with respect to forms, sounds, smells,tastes, touch (massage, sex, pain), and ideas.[44]

Feeling (Sensation)

-(Vedanā)

Craving

- (Taṇhā)Feeling or sensations are of six forms: vision, hearing, olfactory sensation, gustatorysensation, tactile sensation, and intellectual sensation (thought).

Contact

- (Phassa)

Feeling

- (Vedanā)The coming together of the object, the sense medium and the consciousness of thatsense medium[45]is called

contact

.[46]

Six sense media

-(Saḷāyatana)

Contact

[46]- (Phassa)The eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind are the six sense media.

Name-and-form

-(Nāmarūpa)

Six sense media

-(Saḷāyatana)Feeling,[47]perception,[48]intention,[49]contact, and attention:[50]This is calledname. The four great elements,[51]and the body dependent on the four great elements:This is called form.

Consciousness

- (Viññāṇa)

Name-and-form

- (Nāmarūpa)These six are classes of consciousness: eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness,nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness,intellect-consciousness. This is called consciousness.[52]As seen earlier,[46]consciousness and the organ cannot function without each other.

Fabrications (volitional fabrications)

- (Saṅkhāra)

Consciousness

- (Viññāṇa)These three are fabrications: bodily fabrications, verbal fabrications, mentalfabrications. These are called fabrications.

Ignorance

- (Avijjā)

Fabrications (volitionaltendencies)

- (Saṅkhāra)Not knowing suffering, not knowing the origination of suffering, not knowing thecessation of suffering, not knowing the way of practice leading to the cessation of suffering: This is called ignorance.

So working backwards gives us the way to put an end to stress:

Dependent origination196From the remainderless fading and cessation of

ignorance

comes the cessation of

(volitional) fabrications

.From the cessation of

(volitional) fabrications

comes the cessation of

consciousness

. From the cessation of

consciousness

comes the cessation of

name-and-form

. From the cessation of

name-and-form

comes thecessation of the

six sense media

. From the cessation of the

six sense media

comes the cessation of

contact

.From the cessation of

contact

comes the cessation of

feeling

. From the cessation of

feeling

comes the cessationof

craving

. From the cessation of

craving

comes the cessation of

clinging/sustenance

. From the cessation of

clinging/sustenance

comes the cessation of

becoming

. From the cessation of

becoming

comes the cessation of

birth

. From the cessation of

birth

, then aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair allcease. Such is the cessation of

this entire mass of stress and suffering

.

Applications

The Buddha's enlightenment simultaneously comprised his liberation from suffering (Pāli:

dukkha

; Sanskrit:

duhkha

)and his insight into the nature of reality

[53]

[54]

[55]

(nature of experience). The general formulation has twowell-known applications. One applies dependent origination to the concept of suffering, and takes the form of theFour Noble Truths:1.

Dukkha

: There is suffering. Suffering is an intrinsic part of life prior to awakening, also experienced asdissatisfaction, discontent, unhappiness, impermanence.2.

Samudaya

: There is a cause of suffering, which is attachment or desire (

tanha

).3.

Nirodha

: There is a way out of suffering, which is to eliminate attachment and desire.4.

Magga

: The path that leads out of suffering is called the Noble Eightfold Path.The other applies dependent origination to the process of rebirth, and is known as the Twelve Nidanas. The nikayasthemselves do not give a systematic explanation of the nidana series.

[56]

As an expository device, the commentarialtradition presented the factors as a linear sequence spanning over three lives; this does not mean that past, present,and future factors are mutually exclusive

–

in fact, many sutras contend that they are not.

[57]

The twelve nidanascategorized in this way are:

Former life

•ignorance•formations (conditioned things)

Current life

•consciousness•mind and body (personality or identity)•the six sense bases (five physical senses and the mind)•contact (between objects and the senses)•feeling (registering the contact)•craving (for continued contact)•clinging•becoming (similar to formations)

Future life

•birth•old age and deathThis twelve-factor formula is the most familiar presentation, though a number of early sutras introduce lesser-knownvariants which make it clear that the sequence of factors should not be regarded as a linear causal process in whicheach preceding factor gives rise to its successor through a simple reaction. The relationship among factors is alwayscomplex, involving several strands of conditioning.

[58]

For example, whenever there is ignorance, craving andclinging invariably follow, and craving and clinging themselves indicate ignorance.

[57]

Dependent origination200

[17]Williams, Paul.

Buddhist Thought.

Routledge 2000, page 66-72.[18]"Is the doctrine of interdependent origination a metaphysical teaching? The answer depends on one's definition of metaphysics. In this paper,metaphysics describes the character that anything has insofar as it is anything at all. Interdependent origination seems to fit this description."

Thinking through Myths: Philosophical Perspectives

, by Kevin Schilbrack. Routledge: 2002. ISBN 0415254612 (http://books.

google.

com/ books?id=hlYfei3cs20C&pg=PA94&lpg=PA94&dq=PratÄ«tyasamutpÄda+metaphysics&source=web&ots=e55YwWykav&sig=g8G0OspfH5Hwx8eJ71xH8JZ07kI&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA94,M1)[19]"Suffice it to emphasize that the doctrine of dependent origination is not a metaphysical doctrine, in the sense that it does not affirm or denysome super-sensible entities or realities; rather, it is a proposition arrived at through an examination and analysis of the world of phenomena..." Frank J. Hoffman, Deegalle Mahinda,

Pāli Buddhism.

Routledge, 1996, page 177. (http://books.

google.

com/ books?id=WkgdeAx_oMoC&pg=PA177&dq=dependent+origination+metaphysical#PPA177,M1).[20]Determinists argue that everything is completely deterministic, based on natural causal laws that can never be changed; Libertarians arguethat everything is totally up to one's free will, and compatibilists posit a compatibility of these two positions.[21]Bhikku, Thanissaro (1996, (1998)).

Wings to Awakening: Part I

(http://www.

accesstoinsight.

org/lib/authors/thanissaro/wings.

pdf).Metta Forest Monastery, Valley Center, CA. pp. 45

–

49. .[22]"Nevertheless, while it is true that the Buddha suspends all views regarding certain metaphysical questions, he is not an antimetaphysician:nothing in the texts suggests that metaphysical questions are completely meaningless, or that the Buddha denies the soundness of metaphysicsper se...A framework of thought that hinges on the idea that sentient experience is dependently originated and that whatever is dependentlyoriginated is conditioned (sankhata), impermanent, subject to change, and lacking independent selfhood" by Noa Ronkin,

Theravada Metaphysics and Ontology

, " Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings (http://books.

google.

com/books?id=HjVQB03cVMMC&source=gbs_navlinks_s)", Edelglass, Garfield and Garfield. ISBN 978-0-19-532817-2[23]Bhikku, Thanissaro. "Paticca-samuppada-vibhanga Sutta" (http://www.accesstoinsight.

org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.

002.

than.

html).

Translated from Pali

. Access To Insight. . Retrieved July 26, 2010.[24]Bodhi, Bhikku.

Transcendental Dependent Arising

(http://www.accesstoinsight.

org/lib/authors/bodhi/wheel277.

html). BuddhistPublication Society, Kandy Sri Lanka,. .[25]Walshe, Maurice (1996).

The Long Discourses of the Buddha: a Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya

(3. [Aufl.]. ed.). Boston: WisdomPublications. pp. 656. ISBN 9780861711031.. This is identified as the first reference in the Canon in footnote 88 for Sutta 1, verse 3.71'sfootnotes.[26]Ibid., page 497.[27]Ibid., page 202.[28]http://www.

accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.

002.than.html[29]"Nyanatiloka, for his part in this controversy, sets himself up as the defender of the commentarial tradition that extends the 12-links from adescription of a single incarnation into a description of the causes and effects of reincarnation in three separate lifetimes. [...] While I regardthe three-lifetimes interpretation (supported by Nyanatiloka) as incorrect, it deserves some credit for remaining thematically related to theoriginal meaning of the primary source text (whereas many modern interpretations have digressed wildly from it). In a lecture on this subject,Nyanatiloka repeatedly refers to the subject-matter of the 12-links discussed as something transpiring inside the womb, also using the term

“

prenatal

”

. ..." http://asiapacific.

anu.

edu.

au/newmandala/2011/01/27/ unpopular-facts-about-one-of-buddhist-philosophys-most-popular-doctrines/ [30]Thera, Nyanaponika (2006).

The Four Nutriments of Life: An Anthology of Buddhist Texts

(http://www.

accesstoinsight.

org/lib/authors/ nyanaponika/wheel105.

html). Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, Sri Lanka,

The Wheel

Publication No. 105. .[31]The general formula can be found in the following discourses in the Pali Canon: MN 79, MN 115, SN12.21, SN 12.22, SN 12.37, SN 12.41,SN 12.49, SN 12.50, SN 12.61, SN 12.62, SN 55.28, AN 10.92, Ud. 1.1 (first two lines), Ud. 1.2 (last two lines), Ud. 1.3, Nd2, Patis.[32]http://www.

accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.

061.than.html[33]"Whether or not there is the arising of Tathagatas, this property stands

—

this regularity of the Dhamma, this orderliness of the Dhamma,this this/that conditionality." SN 12.20 (http://www.accesstoinsight.

org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.

020.

than.

html)[34]Most Suttas follow the order from ignorance to dukkha. But SN 12.20 (http://www.

accesstoinsight.

org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.

020.

than.html) views this as a teaching of the requisite conditions for sustaining

dukkha

, which is its main application.[35]See SN 12.2 (http://www.

accesstoinsight.

org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.002.

than.html) and DN 15 (http://www.

accesstoinsight.

org/ tipitaka/dn/dn.

15.

0.

than.

html)[36]Since without birth no aging, death, or any of the sorrows and disappointments of life would occur, birth is a requisite cause for dukkha.Thus, the complete cessation of dukkha must imply that there is no further birth for the enlightened.[37]getting attracted, mesmerized, disgusted[38]growing older, tall, healthy, weak, becoming a parent or spouse, rich, etc.[39]annihilation, destruction, suicide, loss of a position etc.[40]Enjoyment and clinging for music, beauty, sexuality, health, etc.[41]Clinging for notions and beliefs such as in God, or other cosmological beliefs, political views, economic views, one's own superiority, eitherdue to caste, sex, race, etc., views regarding how things should be, views on being a perfectionist, disciplinarian, libertarian etc.[42]Clinging for rituals, dressing, rules of cleansing the body etc.[43]That there is a self consisting of form and is finite, or a self consisting of form but infinite, or a self that is formless but finite, or a self that isformless and infinite.

Dependent origination201

[44]As can be seen, sensual cravings result only in sensual clinging, but craving for ideas results in view clinging, practice clinging and self clinging, all of which eventually lead to suffering.[45]Eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, skin-consciousness and mind-consciousness[46]"...To give another example, it is just like the case of a person in a room who sees many things when he opens the window and looks throughit. If it is asked, 'Who is it that sees? Is it the window or the person that actually sees?' the answer is, 'The window does not possess the abilityto see; it is only the person who sees.' If it is again asked, 'Will the person be able to see things on the outside without the window (if he isconfined to a room without the window or with the window closed)?' the answer will be, 'It is not possible to see things through the wallwithout the window. One can only see through the window.' Similarly, in the case of seeing, there are two separate realities of the eye andseeing. (So the eye does not have the ability to see without the eye-consciousness. The eye-consciousness itself cannot see anything withoutthe organ.) The eye is not seeing, nor is seeing the eye, yet there cannot be an act of seeing without the eye. In reality, seeing comes into beingdepending on the eye. It is now evident that in the body there are only two distinct elements of materiality (eye) and mentality(eye-consciousness) at every moment of seeing. In addition, there is also a third element of materiality

—

the visual object. Without the visualobject there is nothing to be seen..." Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw,

Satipatthana Vipassana

(http://www.

accesstoinsight.

org/lib/authors/mahasi/ wheel370.

html), 1995, Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, Sri Lanka,

The Wheel

Publication No. 370/371[47]Here it refers to the function of the mind that cognizes feeling.[48]This is the faculty of the mind that names (recognizes) a feeling as pleasurable, unpleasurable or neutral, depending on what was its originaltendency.[49]This is the faculty of the mind where volitions arise. It is important to note that volition is noted again in the same sequence as a cause of consciousness.[50]This is the faculty of the mind that can penetrate something, analyze, and objectively observe.[51]The earth (property of solidity), water (property of liquity), wind (property of motion, energy and gaseousness), fire (property of heat andcold). See also Mahabhuta. In other places in the Pali Canon (DN 33, MN 140 and SN 27.9) we also see two additional elements - the spaceproperty and the consciousness property. Space refers to the idea of space that is occupied by any of the other four elements. For example anyphysical object occupies space and even though that space is not a property of that object itself, the amount of space it occupies is a propertyof that object and is therefore a derived property of the elements.[52]Bhikku, Thanissaro. "Paticca-samuppada-vibhanga Sutta" (http://www.accesstoinsight.

org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.

002.

than.

html).

Translated from Pali

. Access To Insight. .[53]Harvey, Peter, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 3[54]Waldron, S. William. "The Buddhist Unconscious

–

The ālaya-vijnāna in the context of Indian Buddhist thought" (Oxon: RoutledgeCurzon,2003, repr. 2005), p.9[55]Garfield, Jay L., The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 294[56]Bhikkhu Bodhi,

In the Buddha's Words.

Wisdom Publications, 2005, page 313.[57]Bhikkhu Bodhi,

In the Buddha's Words.

Wisdom Publications, 2005, page 314.[58]Bhikkhu Bodhi,

In the Buddha's Words.

Wisdom Publications, 2005, page 316.[59]Abhidharmakosa, by Vasubandhu. Translated by Leo Pruden, Vol. II, pgs 404-405.[60]Magiliola, Robert (2004). "Nagarjuna and Chi-Tsang on the Value of

This World

: A Reply to Kuang-Ming Wu's Critique of indian andChinese Madhyamika Buddhism".

Journal of Chinese Philosophy

(John Wiley & Sons)

31

(4): 505

–

516.doi:10.1111/j.1540-6253.2004.00168.x.[61]Chinn, Ewing (2001). "Nāgārjuna's Fundamental Doctrine of Pratītyasamutpāda".

Philosophy East and West

(University of Hawai'i Press)

51

(1): 54

–

72. doi:10.1353/pew.2001.0005. JSTOR 1400035.[62]Waldron, S. William, The Buddhist Unconscious

–

The ālaya-vijnāna in the context of Indian Buddhist thought (Oxon: RoutledgeCurzon,2003, repr. 2005), p. 13[63]Waldron, S. William, The Buddhist Unconscious

–

The ālaya-vijnāna in the context of Indian Buddhist thought (Oxon: RoutledgeCurzon,2003, repr. 2005), p. 16[64]Garfield, Jay L., The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 177[65]Norbu (1999), pp. 99, 101[66]From

byang chub sems bsgom pa

, by Mañjusrîmitra. Primordial experience. An Introduction to rDzogs-chen Meditation, pp. 60, 61[67]Bhikkhu Bodhi, "Transcendental Dependent Arising: A Translation and Exposition of the Upanisa Sutta." (http://www.

accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/wheel277.

html).[68]Paul Williams,

Buddhism: The early Buddhist schools and doctrinal history ; Theravāda doctrine.

Taylor & Francis, 2005, page 147.

Dependent origination202

Technical notesReferencesExternal links

•Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (http://www.buddhism-dict.net/ddb/)•Kamma & the Ending of Kamma (http://www.

accesstoinsight.org/lib/modern/thanissaro/wings/1b.html#dependent1)•Maha-nidana Sutta (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/digha/dn15.

html)•Paticca-samuppada-vibhanga Sutta (http://www.

accesstoinsight.org/canon/samyutta/sn12-002.html)•Upanisa Sutta translation by Bhikkhu Thanissaro (http://www.accesstoinsight.

org/canon/samyutta/sn12-023.html)•A Translation and Exposition of the Upanisa Sutta by Bhikkhu Bodhi (http://www.

accesstoinsight.org/lib/bps/ wheels/wheel277.

html)•A Comprehensive Discourse on Paticcasamuppada (http://web.ukonline.

co.uk/buddhism/mahasip3.

htm) byMahasi Sayadaw•Notes on Dhamma - A Note on Paticcasamuppāda (http://nanavira.

xtreemhost.

com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=37) by Nanavira Thera•Bhikkhu Thanissaro: The Shape of Suffering: A Study of Dependent Co-arising (PDF-Dokument; 744 kb) (http:// www.

dhammatalks.

org/Archive/Writings/DependentCo-arising.pdf)•(http://knol.

google.

com/k/christian-thomas-kohl/pratityasamutpada/3so7mxnvl1qgq/13#) Pratityasamutpadain Eastern and Western Views

Distributed cognition

is a psychological theory developed in the mid 1980s by Edwin Hutchins. Using insightsfrom sociology, cognitive science, and the psychology of Vygotsky (cf. cultural-historical psychology) it emphasizesthe social aspects of cognition. It is a framework (not a method) that involves the coordination between individuals,artifacts and the environment. It has several key components:1.Embodiment of information that is embedded in representations of interaction2.Coordination of enaction among embodied agents3.Ecological contributions to a cognitive ecosystemIn a sense, it expresses cognition as the process of information that occurs from interaction with symbols in theworld. It considers and labels all phenomena responsible for this processing as ecological elements of a cognitiveecosystem. The ecosystem is the environment in which ecological elements assemble and interact in respect to aspecific cognitive process. Cognition is then shaped by the transduction of information across extended andembodied modalities, the representations formed as result of their interactions and the attentive distribution of thoserepresentations toward a cognitive goal.Distributed cognition is a branch of cognitive science that proposes that human knowledge and cognition are notconfined to the individual. Instead, it is distributed by placing memories, facts, or knowledge on the objects,individuals, and tools in our environment. Distributed cognition is a useful approach for (re)designing social aspectsof cognition by putting emphasis on the individual and his/her environment. Distributed cognition views a system asa set of representations, and models the interchange of information between these representations. Theserepresentations can be either in the mental space of the participants or external representations available in theenvironment.

Distributed cognition203This abstraction can be categorized into three distinct types of processes.1.Cognitive processes may be distributed across the members of a social group.2.Cognitive processes may be distributed in the sense that the operation of the cognitive system involvescoordination between internal and external (material or environmental) structure.3.Processes may be distributed through time in such a way that the products of earlier events can transform thenature of related events.

Early research

John Milton Roberts thought that social organization could be seen as cognition through a community (Roberts1964). He described the cognitive aspects of a society by looking at the present information and how it movesthrough the people in the society.Daniel L. Schwartz (1978) proposed a distribution of cognition through culture and the distribution of beliefs acrossthe members of a society.In 1999, Gavriel Salomon stated that there were two classes of distributive cognition: shared cognition andoff-loading. Shared cognition is that which is shared among people through common activity such as conversationwhere there is a constant change of cognition based on the other person's responses. An example of off-loadingwould be using a calculator to do arithmetic or a creating a grocery list when going shopping. In that sense, thecognitive duties are off-loaded to a material object.

Applications

Distributed cognition as a theory of learning, i.e. one in which the development of knowledge is attributed to thesystem of thinking agents interacting dynamically with artifacts, has been widely applied in the field of distancelearning, especially in relation to Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) and othercomputer-supported learning tools. Distributed cognition illustrates the process of interaction between people andtechnologies in order to determine how to best represent, store and provide access to digital resources and otherartifacts.Collaborative tagging on the World Wide Web is one of the most recent developments in technological support fordistributed cognition. Beginning in 2004 and quickly becoming a standard on websites, collaborative tagging allowsusers to upload or select materials (e.g. pictures, music files, texts, websites) and associate tags with these materials.Tags can be chosen freely, and are similar to keywords. Other users can then browse through tags; a click on a tagconnects a user to similarly tagged materials. Tags furthermore enable tag clouds, which graphically represent thepopularity of tags, demonstrating co-occurrence relations between tags and thus jump from one tag to another.Distributed cognition can also be seen through cultures and communities. Learning certain habits or followingcertain traditions is seen as cognition distributed over a group of people. Exploring distributed cognition throughcommunity and culture is one way to understand how it may work.With the new research that is emerging in this field, the overarching concept of distributed cognition enhances theunderstanding of interactions between humans, machines and environments.

Distributed cognition204

Metaphors and examples

Distributed cognition is seen when using paper and pencil to do a complicated arithmetic problem. The person doingthe problem may talk with a friend to clarify the problem, and then must write the partial answers on the paper inorder to be able to keep track of all the steps in the calculation. In this example, the parts of distributed cognition areseen in:•setting up the problem, in collaboration with another person,•performing manipulation/arithmetic procedures, both in one's head and by writing down resulting partial answers.The process of working out the answer requires not only the perception and thought of two people, it also requiresthe use of a tool (paper) to extend an individual's memory. So the intelligence is distributed, both between people,and a person and an object.Another metaphor for distributed cognition would be a plane and the crew on it. It is not the cognitive performanceand expertise of any one single person or machine that is important for our well being. It is the cognition that isdistributed over the personnel, sensors, and machinery both in the plane and on the ground, including but not limitedto the pilots and crew as a whole.

Quotes

On educational psychology:People think in conjunction and partnership with others and with the help of culturally provided tools andimplements.

—

Salomon, 1997 p. xiiiOn cognitive science:Nervous systems do not form representations of the world, they can only form representations of interactionswith the world.

[1]

The emphasis on finding and describing "knowledge structures" that are somewhere "inside" the individualencourages us to overlook the fact that human cognition is always situated in a complex sociocultural worldand cannot be unaffected by it.

—

Hutchins, 1995 p. xiii

References

•Brown, Ann L., et al.

“

Distributed Expertise in the Classroom.

”

Distributed Cognitions: Psychological andEducational Considerations. Ed. Gavriel Salomon. New York: Cambridge UP, 1993. 188-28.•Dror, I. E. & Harnad, S. (2008). Offloading Cognition onto Cognitive Technology

[2]

. in I.Dror & S. Harnad(Eds.), Cognition Distributed: How Cognitive Technology Extends Our Minds (pp 1

–

23). Amsterdam: JohnBenjamins Publishing.•Hutchins, Edwin (1995).

Cognition in the Wild

. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-58146-9.•Hutchins, E. (1995) "How a cockpit remembers its speeds". Cognitive Science, 19, 265-288.•Norman, D.A. (1993) "Things that make us smart" (Addison-Wesley).•Perry, M. (2003) "Distributed Cognition". In J.M. Carroll (Ed.) "HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks: Towardan Interdisciplinary Science" (Morgan Kaufmann) 193-223.•Roberts, John M. (1964). "The Self-Management of Cultures". In Ward H., Goodenough.

Explorations inCultural Anthropology

. New York: McGraw Hill.•Salomon, Gavriel (1997).

Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations

[3]

. CambridgeUniversity Press. ISBN 0-521-57423-4.

Distributed cognition205•Zhang, J. & Norman, D.A. (1994) "Representations in Distributed Cognitive Tasks", Cognitive Science, 18,87-122.

Notes

[1]Hutchins, Edwin. 12-3-09.

Distributed Cognition

lecture.[2]http://cognitiveconsultantsinternational.

com/Dror_CT_offloading_cognition_onto_cognitive_technology.

pdf [3]http://books.

google.

com/books?id=m8Yna0cjxAgC

Further reading

•Dror, I.E. & Harnad, S. (eds.) (2008). Cognition Distributed: How Cognitive Technology Extends Our Minds.(258 pp.) John Benjamins, Amsterdam.•Gureckis, T.M. and Goldstone. R.L. (2006) "Thinking in Groups", Pragmatics and Cognition, 14 (2), 293-311.•LaGrandeur, K. (1998). "Splicing Ourselves into the Machine: Electronic Communities, Systems Theory, andComposition Studies." (http://www.eric.

ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/ 0000019b/80/14/ec/13.

pdf) ERIC, March, 1998: ED 410 563.•Resnick, L, Levine, S. and Teasley, L., (Eds.),

Perspectives of socially shared cognition

(Washington, D.C.:American Psychological association, 1988).•Ross, D.,

et al.

, (Eds.),

Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual volition in social context

(Cambridge,Mass: MIT Press, 2007).

Embodied cognition

In philosophy,the

embodied mind thesis

holds that the nature of the human mindis largely determined by the form of the human body. Philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists and artificial intelligence researchers who study

embodied cognition

and the

embodied mind

argue that all aspects of cognition are shaped by aspects of the body.The aspects of cognition include high level mental constructs (such as concepts and categories) and humanperformance on various cognitive tasks (such as reasoning or judgement). The aspects of the body include theperceptual system, the intuitions that underlie the ability to move, interactions with the environment (situatedness)and the ontological assumptions about the world that are built into the body and the brain.The embodied mind thesis is opposed to other theories of cognition such as cognitivism, computationalism andCartesian dualism.

[1]

The idea has roots in Kant and 20th century continental philosophy (such as Merleau-Ponty).The modern version depends on insights drawn from recent research in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science,artificial intelligence, robotics and neurobiology.Embodied cognition is an important topic in social and cognitive psychology, with topics ranging from socialinteraction to decision-making.

[2]

Embodied cognition generally reflects the idea that the motor system influencesour cognition, just as the mind influences bodily actions. For example, when participants hold a pencil in their teethengaging the muscles of a smile, they comprehend pleasant sentences faster than unpleasant ones.

[3]

And it works inreverse: holding a pencil in their teeth to engage the muscles of a frown increases the time it takes to comprehendpleasant sentences.

[3]

George Lakoff (a cognitive scientist and linguist) and his collaborators (including Mark Johnson, Mark Turner, andRafael E. Núñez) have written a series of books promoting and expanding the thesis based on discoveries incognitive science, such as conceptual metaphor and image schema.

[4]

Robotics researchers such as Rodney Brooks, Hans Moravec and Rolf Pfeifer have argued that true artificialintelligence can only be achieved by machines that have sensory and motor skills and are connected to the worldthrough a body.

[5]

The insights of these robotics researchers have in turn inspired philosophers like Andy Clark and

Embodied cognition206Horst Hendriks-Jansen.

[6]

Neuroscientists Gerald Edelman, António Damásio and others have outlined the connection between the body,individual structures in the brain and aspects of the mind such as consciousness, emotion, self-awareness and will.

[7]

Biology has also inspired Gregory Bateson, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Eleanor Rosch and EvanThompson to develop a closely related version of the idea, which they call enactivism.

[8]

Patricia Carpenter ispursuing a biologically-grounded account of cognition called the "fractal catalyticmodel".Wikipedia:Stay_on_topic

[9]

[10]

The motor theory of speech perception proposed by Alvin Liberman andcolleagues at the Haskins Laboratories argues that the identification of words is embodied in perception of the bodilymovements by which spoken words are made.

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

Philosophy

In his pre-critical period, philosopher Immanuel Kant advocated a remarkably similar embodied view of themind-body problem that was part of his

Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven

(1755). José Ortega yGasset, George Santayana, Miguel de Unamuno, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger and others in thebroadly existential tradition have proposed philosophies of mind influencing the development of the modern'embodiment' thesis.The embodiment movement in AI has fueled the embodiment argument in Philosophy, see in particular Andy Clark(1997, 1998, 2008)

[16]

and Hendriks-Jansen (1996). It has also given emotions a new status in philosophy of mindas an indispensable constituent, not a non-essential addition to rational intellectual thought. In Philosophy of Mind,the idea that cognition is embodied is sympathetic with other views of cognition such as situated cognition orexternalism which is an even more radical move towards a total re-localization of mental processes out of the neuraldomain. It is important to stress that these views are forms of physicalism insofar as they maintain that the mind isidentical with physical processes, though such processes are external to the boundaries of the nervous system.

Psychology

Visual Search

One embodied cognition study shows that action intention can affect processing in visual search, with moreorientation errors for pointing than for grasping.

[17]

Participants either pointed to or grasped target objects of 2 colorsand 2 orientations (45° and 135°). There were randomized numbers of distractors as well (0, 3, 6, or 9), whichdiffered from the target in color, orientation, or both. A tone sounded to inform participants which target orientationto find. Participants kept their eyes on a fixation point until it turned from red to the target color. The screen then litup and the participants searched for the target, either pointing to it or grasping it (depending on the block). Therewere 2 blocks for pointing and 2 for grasping, with the order counterbalanced. Each block had 64 trials.

[17]Graph of the visual search task results showingthat participants made less object orientationerrors when grasping than pointing.

Results from the experiment show that accuracy decreases with anincrease in the number of distractors.

[17]

Overall, participants mademore orientation errors than color errors.

[17]

There was no main effectof accuracy between the pointing and grasping conditions, butparticipants made significantly less orientation errors in the graspingcondition than the pointing condition.

[17]

Color errors were the same inboth conditions.

[17]

Because orientation is important in grasping anobject, these results fit with the researchers' hypothesis that the plan tograsp an object will aid in orientation accuracy.

[17]

This supportsembodied cognition because action intention (planning to grasp anobject) can affect visual processing of task-relevant information (orientation).

[17]

Embodied cognition207

Distance Perception

Internal states can affect distance perception, which relates to embodied cognition.

[18]

Researchers randomlyassigned college student participants to high-choice, low-choice, and control conditions. The high-choice conditionsigned a

“

freedom of choice

”

consent form indicating their decision to wear a Carmen Miranda costume and walkacross a busy area of campus. Low-choice participants signed an

“

experimenter choice

”

consent form, indicating theexperimenter assigned the participant to wear the costume. A control group walked across campus but did not wear acostume. At the conclusion of the experiment, each participant completed a survey which asked them to estimate thedistance they walked.

[18]

The high-choice participants perceived the distance walked as significantly shorter than participants in thelow-choice and control groups, even though they walked the same distance.

[18]

The manipulation caused high-choiceparticipants to feel responsible for the choice to walk in the embarrassing costume.

[18]

This created cognitivedissonance, which refers to a discrepancy between attitudes and behaviors.

[18]

High-choice participants reconciledtheir thoughts and actions by perceiving the distance as shorter.

[18]

These results show the ability of internal states toaffect perception of physical distance moved, which illustrates the reciprocal relationship of the body and mind inembodied cognition.

[18]

Perspective

Researchers have found that when making judgements about objects in photographs, people will take the perspectiveof a person in the picture instead of their own.

[19]

They showed college undergraduate participants 1 of 3photographs and asked where 1 object in the picture was compared to the other object. For example, if the 2 objectswere an apple and a banana, the participants would have to respond to a question about the location of the applecompared to the banana. The photographs either had no person, a person looking at the object, in this case thebanana, or a person reaching for the banana. The photograph and question appeared in a larger set of questionnairesnot related to the study.

[19]Graph depicting the percentage of responses byperspective for each photograph condition.

Results show that participants who viewed photographs that included aperson were significantly more likely to respond from another'sperspective than those who saw photographs with no person.

[19]

Therewere no differences in perspective of responses for the person lookingversus reaching.

[19]

Participants who saw the scene without a personwere significantly more likely to respond from their ownperspective.

[19]

This means that the presence of a person in thephotograph affected the perspective used even though the questionfocused solely on the two objects.

[19]

The researchers state that theseresults suggest disembodied cognition, in which the participants putthemselves into the body of the person in the photograph.

[19]

Language Comprehension

The motor system is involved in language comprehension, in this case when sentences were performable by ahuman, there was a change in participants' overall movement of a pendulum.

[20]

Researchers performed anexperiment in which college undergraduate participants swung a pendulum while completing a "sentence judgementtask." Participants would swing the pendulum with both hands for 10 seconds before a prompt and then a sentencewould appear on the screen until the participant responded. In the control condition, participants swung thependulum without performing the "sentence judgement task." Each trial had half "plausible" and half "implausible"sentences. The "plausible" sentences made sense semantically, while the "implausible" ones did not. The"performable" sentences could be performed by a human, while the "inanimate" sentences could not. Participants

Embodied cognition208responded by saying "yes" to the "plausible" sentences.

[20]The change in "relative phase shift" for differentconditions in the study. Participants had asignificantly larger change for "performable"sentences than "inanimate" sentences andswinging only.

Results show a significant "relative phase shift," or overall change inmovement of the swinging pendulum, for the "performable"sentences.

[20]

This change did not occur for "inaminate" sentences orthe control condition.

[20]

The researchers did not expect an overallphase shift, instead they expected a change in the variability of movement, or the "standard deviation of relative phase shift."

[20]

Although not entirely expected, these results support embodiedcognition and show that the motor system is involved in theunderstanding of language.

[20]

The researchers suggest that the natureof this relationship needs to be further studied to determine the exactcorrelation this task has to bi-manual motor movements.

[20]

Some researchers extend embodied cognition to include language.

[2]

They describe language as a tool that aids in broadening our sense of body.

[2]

For instance, when asked to identify

“

this

”

object, participantsmost often choose an object near to them.

[2]

Conversely, when asked toidentify

“

that

”

object, participants choose an object further away fromthem.

[2]

Language allows us to distinguish between distances in more complex ways than the simple perceptualdifference between near and far objects.

[2]

Memory

A study examining memory and embodied cognition illustrates that people remember more of the gist of a storywhen they physically act it out.

[21]

Researchers divided female participants randomly into 5 groups, which were"Read Only," "Writing," "Collaborative Discussion," "Independent Discussion," and "Improvisation." Allparticipants received a monologue about teen addiction and were told to pay attention to details about the characterand action in the monologue. Participants were given 5 minutes to read the monologue twice, unaware of a futurerecall test. In the "Read Only" condition participants filled out unrelated questionnaires after reading the monologue.In the "Writing" condition participants responded to 5 questions about the story from the perspective of the characterin the monologue. They had 6 minutes to answer each question. In the "Collaborative Discussion" conditionparticipants responded from the character's perspective to the same questions as the "Writing" group, but in groups of 4 or 5 women. They were also given 6 minutes per question and everyone participated in answering each question.The "Independent Discussion" condition was the same as the "Collaborative Discussion," except 1 person answeredeach question. In the "Improvisation" condition participants acted out 5 scenes from the monologue in groups of 5women. The researchers suggest that this condition involves embodied cognition and will produce better memory forthe monologue. Every participant played the main character and a supporting character once. Participants were givenshort prompts from lines in the monologue, which were excluded from the memory test. Participants had 2 minutesto choose characters and 4 minutes for improvisations. The recall test was the monologue with 96 words or phrasesmissing. Participants had to fill in the blanks as accurately as possible.

[21]

Researchers gave the recall test to a group who did not read the monologue. They scored significantly lower than theother groups, which indicated that guessing was not easy.

[21]

In coding the answers to the recall test, exact wordswere labeled "Verbatim", and correct content but varied wording was labeled "Gist". The combination of "Verbatim"and "Gist" was called "Total Memory." The "Improvisational" group had more "Gist" memories than any othergroup and had more "Total Memory" than both of the discussion groups.

[21]

The results fit the researchers'hypothesis that the "Improvisational" group would remember more because they actively rehearsed the informationfrom the monologue.

[21]

Although other groups had also elaborately encoded the information, the "Improvisation"group remembered significantly more than the discussion groups and marginally more than the "Reading Only" and

Embodied cognition209"Writing" groups.

[21]

Simply experiencing the monologue in an active way aids in remembering the "Gist."

[21]

Therewere no differences across groups for "Verbatim" memory, which they suggest could take longer than the limitedtime during the experiment to develop.

[21]

Approach and Avoidance

In research focused on the approach and avoidance effect, people showed an approach effect for positive words.

[22]

In the "positive toward condition," participants moved positive words toward the center of the screen and negativewords away. In the "negative toward condition," participants moved negative words toward the center and positivewords away. Participants were given feedback about their accuracy at the end of each of the 4 experimental blocks.In the first experiment the word at the center of the screen had a positive valence, while in the second experiment thecentral word had a negative valence. In the third experiment, the center of the screen had an empty box.

[22]Table showing response times for the positive,negative, and neutral valence conditions in theapproach and avoidance experiment. Participantswere significantly faster for the "positive toward"condition regardless of the central word's valence.

As predicted, in the first experiment participants in the "positivetoward condition" responded significantly faster than those in the"negative toward condition."

[22]

This fits the approach/avoidance effectin embodied cognition, which states that people are faster to approachpositive things and avoid negative ones.

[22]

In the second experiment,researchers expected participants in the "negative toward condition" tobe faster, yet those in the "positive toward condition" respondedsignificantly faster.

[22]

Although effects were smaller in the thirdexperiment, participants in the "positive toward condition" were stillfaster.

[22]

Overall, people were faster in the "positive towardcondition," regardless of the valence of the central word. Despitemixed results regarding the researchers' expectations, they maintainthat the motor system is important in processing higher level representations such as the action goal.

[22]

In this study,participants showed strong approach effects in the "positive toward condition," which supports embodiedcognition.

[22]

As part of a larger study, researchers separated participants into 5 groups with different instructions.

[23]

In the"approach" condition, participants were instructed to imagine physically moving the product toward them, but in the"avoid" condition, participants had to imagine moving the product away from them. In the "control" condition,participants were instructed to simply observe the product. The "correction" condition involved the same instructionsas the approach condition, except participants were told that the body can affect judgment. In the "approachinformation" condition, participants had to list 5 reasons why they would obtain the product. After viewing a pictureof an aversive product, participants rated on a scale of 1 to 7 how desirable the product was and how much theyapproached of or avoided the product. They also provided how much they would pay for the product.

[23]

An approach/avoidance effect was found in relation to product evaluation.

[23]

Participants in the "approach"condition liked the aversive product significantly more and would pay more for it. There were no differencesbetween the "avoidance," "control," "correction," and "approach information" conditions. Simulation of approachcan affect liking and willingness to pay for a product, but the effect can be reversed if the person knows about thisinfluence.

[23]

This supports embodied cognition.

[23]

Self-Regulation

As part of a larger study, one experiment randomly assigned college undergraduates to 2 groups.

[24]

In the"muscle-firming" condition participants grasped a pen in their hand, while in the "control" condition participantsheld the pen in their fingers. The participants were then asked to fill out donations to Haiti for the Red Cross insealed envelopes. They were told to return the envelope regardless of whether they donated. They also filled outquestionnaires about their feelings about the Red Cross, their tendency to donate, their feelings about Haiti, what

Embodied cognition210they thought the purpose of the study was, etc.

[24]

Significantly more participants in the "muscle-firming" condition than in the "control" condition donated money.

[24]

Condition did not effect the actual amount donated when participants chose to donate. As the researchers predicted,the "muscle-firming" condition helped participants get over their physical aversion to viewing the devastation inHaiti and spend money. Muscle-firming in this experiment may also be related to an increase in self control,suggesting embodied cognition can play a role in self-regulation.

[24]

Some suggest that the embodied mind serves self-regulatory processes by combining movement and cognition toreach a goal.

[25]

Thus, the embodied mind has a facilitative effect. Some judgments, such as the emotion of a face,are detected more quickly when a participant mimics the facial expression that is being evaluated.

[18]

Individualsholding a pen in their mouths to freeze their facial muscles and make them unable to mimic the expression were lessable to judge emotions. Goal-relevant actions may be encouraged by embodied cognition, as evidenced by theautomated approach and avoidance of certain environmental cues.

[18]

Embodied cognition is also influenced by thesituation. If one moves in a way previously associated with danger, the body may require a greater level of information processing than if the body moves in a way associated with a benign situation.

[25]

Social Psychology

Some social psychologists examined embodied cognition and hypothesized that embodied cognition would besupported by embodied rapport.

[26]

Embodied rapport would be demonstrated by pairs of same-sex strangers usingAron

’

s paradigm, which instructs participants to alternate asking certain questions and to progressively self-disclose.The researchers predicted that participants would mimic each other

’

s movements, reflecting embodied cognition.Half the participants completed a control task of reading and editing a scientific article, while half the participantscompleted a shortened version of Aron

’

s self-disclosure paradigm.

[26]Results from the social embodied cognition studythat illustrate the relationship between positiveemotions, observed behavioral synchrony, andembodied rapport.

There is a significant correlation between self-disclosure and positiveemotions towards the other participant.

[26]

Participants randomlyassigned to the self-disclosure task displayed more behavioralsynchrony (rated by independent judges watching the tapes of eachcondition on mute) and reported more positive emotions than thecontrol group.

[26]

Since bodily movements influence the psychologicalexperience of the task, the relationship between self-disclosure andpositive feelings towards one's partner may be an example of embodiedcognition.

[26]

Evolutionary View of Embodied Cognition

Embodied cognition may also be defined from the perspective of evolutionary psychologists

[27]

. Evolutionarypsychologists view emotion as an important self-regulatory aspect of embodied cognition, and emotion as amotivator towards goal-relevant action

[27]

. Emotion helps drive adaptive behavior. The evolutionary perspectivecites language, both spoken and written, as types of embodied cognition

[27]

. Pacing and non-verbal communicationreflect embodied cognition in spoken language. Technical aspects of written language, such as italics, all caps, andemoticons promote an inner voice and thereby a sense of feeling rather than thinking about a written message

[27]

.

Embodied cognition211

Cognitive science and Linguistics

George Lakoff and his collaborators have developed several lines evidence that suggest that people use theirunderstanding of familiar physical objects, actions and situations (such as containers, spaces, trajectories) tounderstand other more complex domains. Lakoff argues that

all

cognition is based on knowledge that comes fromthe body and that other domains are mapped onto our embodied knowledge using a combination of conceptualmetaphor, image schema and prototypes.

Conceptual metaphor

Lakoff and Mark Johnson

[28]

showed that humans use metaphor ubiquitously and that metaphors operate at aconceptual level (i.e., they map one conceptual domain onto another), they involve an unlimited number of individual expressions and that the same metaphor is used conventionally throughout a culture. Lakoff and hiscollaborators have collected thousands of examples of conceptual metaphors in many domains.

[28]

[29]

For example, people will use typically use language about journeys to discuss the history and status of a love affair, ametaphor Lakoff and Johnson call "LOVE IS A JOURNEY". It is used in such expression as: "we arrived at acrossroads," "we parted ways", "we hit the rocks" (as in a sea journey), "she's in the driver's seat", or, simply, "we'retogether". In cases like these, something complex (a love affair) is described in terms of something that can be donewith a body (travel through space).

Prototypes

Prototypes are "typical" members of a category, e.g. a robin is a prototypical bird, but a penguin is not. The role of prototypes in human cognition was first identified and studied by Eleanor Rosch in the 1970s.

[30]

She was able toshow that prototypical objects are more easily categorized than non-prototypical objects, and that people answeredquestions about a category as a whole by reasoning about a prototype. She also identified basic level categories:

[31]

categories that have prototypes that are easily visualized (such as a chair) and are associated with basic physicalmotions (such as "sitting"). Prototypes of basic level categories are used to reason about more general categories.Prototype theory has been used to explain human performance on many different cognitive tasks and in a largevariety of domains.

[32]

George Lakoff argues that prototype theory shows that the categories that people use arebased on our experience of having a body and have no resemblance to logical classes or types. For Lakoff, thisshows that traditional objectivist accounts of truth can not be correct.

[32]

Artificial intelligence and robotics

Artificial intelligence research before the 1980s simulated intelligence using logic and high-level abstract symbols(an approach called Good old-fashioned AI). This "disembodied" approach ran into serious difficulties in the 1970sand 80s, as researchers discovered that abstract, disembodied reasoning was highly inefficient and could not achievehuman-levels of competence on many simple tasks.

[33]

Funding agencies (such as DARPA) withdrew fundingbecause the field of AI had failed to achieve it's stated objectives, leading to difficult period now known as the "AIwinter". Many AI researchers began to doubt that high level symbolic reasoning could ever perform well enough tosolve simple problems. In recent decades, AI research has achieved a significant amount of success by using"embodied" approaches; that is, by directly simulating the functions we associate with the body (such as perceptionand motion) without using logic or any similar representation. The experience of AI research provides another line of evidence supporting the embodied mind thesis.

Embodied cognition212

Moravec's paradox

As Moravec writes:

“

Encoded in the large, highly evolved sensory and motor portions of the human brain is a billion years of experience about the nature of the world and how to survive in it. The deliberate process we callreasoning is, I believe, the thinnest veneer of human thought, effective only because it is supported bythis much older and much powerful, though usually unconscious, sensorimotor knowledge. We are allprodigious olympians in perceptual and motor areas, so good that we make the difficult look easy.Abstract thought, though, is a new trick, perhaps less than 100 thousand years old. We have not yetmastered it. It is not all that intrinsically difficult; it just seems so when we do it.

”

[34]

Embodiment as an approach to artificial intelligence

Solving problems of perception and locomotion directly

Many artificial intelligence researchers have argued that a machine may need a human-like body to think and speakas well as a human being. As early as 1950, Alan Turing wrote:It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money canbuy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. That process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. (Turing, 1950).

[35]

Embodiment theory was brought into Artificial Intelligence most notably by Rodney Brooks in the 1980s. Brooksshowed that robots could be more effective if they 'thought' (planned or processed) and perceived as little aspossible. The robot's intelligence is geared towards only handling the minimal amount of information necessary tomake its behavior be appropriate and/or as desired by its creator.The embodied approach to AI has been given several different names by different schools of researchers, including:Nouvelle AI (Brooks' term), Situated AI, Behavior based AI and Embodied cognitive science.

Neuroscience

One source of inspiration for embodiment theory has been research in cognitive neuroscience, such as the proposalsof Gerald Edelman concerning how mathematical and computational models such as neuronal group selection andneural degeneracy result in emergent categorization.Rohrer (2005) discusses how both our neural and developmental embodiment shape both our mental and linguisticcategorizations. The degree of thought abstraction has been found to be associated with physical distance which thenaffects associated ideas and perception of risk.

[36]

The embodied mind thesis is compatible with some views of cognition promoted in neuropsychology, such as thetheories of consciousness of Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, Gerald Edelman, and Antonio Damasio.

Embodied cognition213

Criticisms of Embodied Cognition

Research on embodied cognition is extremely broad, covering a wide range of concepts. Methods to study embodiedcognition vary from experiment to experiment based on the operational definition used by researchers. There is muchevidence for embodied cognition, although interpretation of results and their significance may be disputed.Researchers continue to search for the best way to study and interpret embodied cognition.

Infants as Models of Embodied Cognition

Some

[37]

criticize the notion that pre-verbal children provide an ideal channel for studying embodied cognition,especially embodied social cognition.

[38]

It may be impossible to know when a pre-verbal infant is a "pure model" of embodied cognition, since infants experience dramatic changes in social behavior throughout development.

[37]

A9-month old has reached a different developmental stage than a 2-month old. Looking-time and reaching measures of embodied cognition may not represent embodied cognition since infants develop object permanence of objects theycan see before they develop object permanence with objects they can touch.

[37]

True embodied cognition suggeststhat children would have to first physically engage with an object to understand object permanence.

[37]

The response to this critique is that infants are "ideal models" of embodied cognition.

[38]

Infants are the best modelsbecause they utilize symbols less than adults do.

[38]

Looking-time could likely be a better measure of embodiedcognition than reaching because infants have not developed certain fine motor skills yet.

[38]

Infants may first developa passive mode of embodied cognition before they develop the active mode involving fine motor movements.

[38]

Overdrawn Conclusions?

Some criticize the conclusions made by researchers about embodied cognition.

[39]

The pencil-in-teeth study isfrequently cited as an example of these invalidly drawn conclusions. The researchers believed that the quickerresponses to positive sentences by participants engaging their smiling muscles represented embodied cognition.

[3]

However, opponents argue that the effects of this exercise were primed or facilitated by the engagement of certainfacial muscles.

[39]

Many cases of facilitative movements of the body may be incorrectly labeled as evidence of embodied cognition.

[39]

Six views of embodied cognition

The following

“

Six Views of Embodied Cognition

”

are due to Margaret Wilson:

[40]

1.Cognition is situated. Cognitive activity takes place in the context of a real-world environment, and inherentlyinvolves perception and action. One example of this is moving around a room while, at the same time, trying todecide where the furniture should go. Another example is day-dreaming. You are in a situation, but you

’

re not inthe situation or 'present'. At the time you may be doing something, but your mind or your thoughts are in a muchdifferent place.2.Cognition is time-pressured. Cognition must be understood in terms of how it functions under the pressure of real-time interaction with the environment. When you

’

re under pressure to make a decision, the choice that ismade emerges from the confluence of pressures that you

’

re under and in their absence, a decision may be madecompletely different. Since there was pressure, the result was the decision you made.3.We off-load cognitive work onto the environment. Because of limits on our information-processing abilities, weexploit the environment to reduce the cognitive workload. We make the environment hold or even manipulateinformation for us, and we harvest that information only on a need-to-know basis. This is seen when people havecalendars, agendas, PDA

’

s, or anything to help them with everyday functions. We write things down so we canuse it when we need it, instead of taking the time to memorize or encode it into our minds.4.The environment is part of the cognitive system. The information flow between mind and world is so dense andcontinuous that, for scientists studying the nature of cognitive activity, the mind alone is not a meaningful unit of

Embodied cognition214analysis. This statement means that the production of cognitive activity does not come from mind alone, butrather is a mixture of the mind and the environmental situation that we are in. These interactions become part of our cognitive systems. Our thinking, decision making, and future are all impacted by our environmentalsituations.5.Cognition is for action. The function of the mind is to guide action and things such as perception and memorymust be understood in terms of their contribution to situation-appropriate behavior. This claim has to do with thevisual and memory perception that our minds have. Our vision is encoded into our minds as a

“

what

”

and

“

where

”

concept. Meaning the structure and placement of an object. This idea goes back to what we are used to and whatwe have been exposed to. Our perception of what we see comes from our experience and exposure of it. Memoryin this case doesn

’

t necessarily mean memorizing something. Rather remembering in a relevant point of viewinstead of as it really is. We remember how relevant it is to us, and decide if it

’

s worth remembering.6.Off-line cognition is body-based. Even when decoupled from the environment, the activity of the mind isgrounded in mechanisms that evolved for interaction with the environment- that is, mechanisms of sensoryprocessing and motor control. This is shown with infants or toddlers best. Children utilize skills and abilities theywere born with, such as sucking, grasping, and listening, to learn more about the environment. The skills arebroken down into five main categories that combine sensory with motor skills, sensorimotor functions. The fivemain skills are:1.Mental Imagery- Is visualizing something based on your perception of it, when it is not there or is not present.An example of this would be having a race. You are all excited and full of adrenaline and you take a momentand you can actually see yourself winning the race.2.Working Memory- Short term memory3.Episodic Memory- Long term memory4.Implicit Memory- means by which we learn certain skills until they become automatic for us. An example of this would be an adult brushing his/her teeth, or an expert race car driver putting the car in drive.5.Reasoning and Problem-Solving- Having a mental model of something will increase problem-solvingapproaches.

Criticism of the Six Claims

Some authors go so far as to complain that the phrase

“

situated cognition

”

implies falsely that there also existscognition that is not situated (Greeno & Moore, 1993, p. 50). Of these, the first three and the fifth claim appear to beat least partially true, and their usefulness is best evaluated in terms of the range of their applicability. The sixthclaim has received the least attention, but may be the most powerful of the six claims (Wilson M., 2002).

Evolutionary Epistemology

Theorists whose theories of embodiment of cognition are more closely tied to Universal Darwinism are evolutionaryepistemologists such as Karl Popper and Donald T. Campbell.

[41]

In their view it is the action and the form of thebody which are the sources of the knowledge for any organism as long as it reflects the environment well enough forthe organism to be able to survive in it and be competitive enough to reproduce at a sustainable rate in it. Blindvariation and selective retention is the universal two-step mechanism which over the course of time enablesknowledge to be formed filogenetically and ontogenetically, and simultaneously on different levels, both thehard-wired knowledge and the 'softer' ones.

Embodied cognition215

Notes

[1]Varela, Thompson & Rosch 1992[2]Borghi, A. M.; Cimatti, F. (2010). "Embodied cognition and beyond: Acting and sensing the body".

Neuropsychologia

48

: 763

–

773.doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.10.029.[3]Glenberg, A.; Havas, D.; Becker, R.; & Rinck, M. (2010).

Grounding language in bodily states: the case for emotion

.[4]Lakoff & Johnson (1980), Lakoff (1987), Lakoff & Turner (1989), Lakoff & Johnson (1999), Lakoff & Nunez 2000[5]Moravec 1988, Brooks 1990, Pfeiffer 2001[6]Clark 1997, Hendriks-Jansen 1996[7]Edelman 2004, Damasio 1999[8]Maturana & Varela 1987, Varela, Thompson & Rosch 1992[9]Carpenter, Patricia. Patricia Carpenter (http://www.

psy.cmu.edu/faculty/carpenter/index.

html), Carnegie Mellon, October 30, 2007.[10]Davia, Christopher J.. "Minds, Brains & Catalysis: A theory of cognition grounded in metabolism" (http://www.

psy.

cmu.

edu/~davia/ mbc/). . Retrieved 2010-03-30.[11]Liberman AM, Cooper FS, Shankweiler DP, Studdert-Kennedy M. (1967). Perception of the speech code. Psychol Rev.74(6):431-61.PubMed (http://www.

ncbi.

nlm.nih.

gov/pubmed/4170865)[12]Liberman AM, Mattingly IG. (1985). The motor theory of speech perception revised. Cognition. 21(1):1-36. PubMed (http://www.

ncbi.nlm.

nih.

gov/pubmed/4075760)[13]Liberman AM, Mattingly IG. (1989). A specialization for speech perception. Science. 243(4890):489-94. PubMed (http://www.

ncbi.

nlm.nih.

gov/pubmed/2643163)[14]Liberman AM, Whalen DH. (2000). On the relation of speech to language. Trends Cogn Sci. 4(5):187-196. PubMed (http://www.

ncbi.nlm.

nih.

gov/pubmed/10782105)[15]Galantucci B, Fowler CA, Turvey MT. (2006). The motor theory of speech perception reviewed (http://pbr.

psychonomic-journals.

org/ content/13/3/361.

full.

pdf). Psychon Bull Rev. 13(3):361-77. PubMed (http://www.

ncbi.

nlm.

nih.

gov/pubmed/17048719)[16]Clark, A., (1997), Being there: putting brain, body and world together again, Cambridge (Mass), MIT Press. Clark, A., (2008), Supersizingthe Mind, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Clark, A. and D. Chalmers, (1998), "The Extended Mind." in Analysis, 58(1): 10-23.[17]Bekkering, H.; Neggers, S. F. W. (2001). "Visual search is modulated by action intentions".

Psychological Science

13

(4): 370

–

374.doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2002.00466.x.[18]Balcetis, E.; Dunning, D. (2007). "Cognitive dissonance and the perception of natural environments".

Psychological Science

18

(10):917

–

921. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.02000.x.[19]Tversky, B.; Hard, B. M. (2009). "Embodied and disembodied cognition: Spatial perspective-taking".

Cognition

110

: 124

–

129.doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2008.10.008.[20]Olmstead, A. J.; Viswanathan, N.; Aicher, K. A.; & Fowler, C. A. (2009). "Sentence comprehension affects the dynamics of bimanualcoordination: Implications for embodied cognition".

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

62

(12): 2409

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2417.doi:10.1080/17470210902846765.[21]Scott, C. L.; Harris, R. J.; & Rothe, A. R. (2001). "Embodied cognition through improvisation improves memory for a dramatic monologue".

Discourse Processes

31

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–

305. doi:10.1207/S15326950dp31-3_4.[22]van Dantzig, S.; Zeelenberg, R.; & Pecher D. (2009). "Unconstraining theories of embodied cognition".

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

45

: 345

–

351. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2008.11.001.[23]Labroo, A. A.; Nielsen, J. H. (2010). "Half the thrill is in the chase: Twisted inferences from embodied cognitions and brand evaluation".

Journal of Consumer Research

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: 143

–

158. doi:10.1086/649908.[24]Hung, I. W.; Labroo, A. A. (2011). "From firm muscles to firm willpower: Understanding the role of embodied cognition in self-regulation".

Journal of Consumer Research

37

: 1046

–

1064. doi:10.1086/657240.[25]Balcetis, E.; Cole, S. (2009). "Body in mind: the role of embodied cognition in self-regulation".

Social and Personality PsychologyCompass

: 759

–

774. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2009.00197.x.[26]Vacharkulksemsuk, T.; Fredrickson, B. L. (2011). "Strangers in sync: achieving embodied rapport through shared movements".

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2011.07.015.[27]Kaschak, M. P.; Maner, J. K., Miller, S., & Coyle, J. M. (2009). "Embodied social cognition: bodies, emotions, and blackberries".

European Journal of Social Psychology

39

: 1255

–

1256. doi:10.1002/ejsp.692.[28]Lakoff & Johnson 1980.[29]Lakoff & Turner 1989.[30]Rosch, Eleanor (1973). "Natural categories".

Cognitive Psychology

(4): 328

–

350.[31]Rosch, Eleanor (1978). "Principles of Categorization". In Rosch, Eleanor; Lloyd, B. B..

Cognition and Categorization'

. Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates. pp. 7

–

48.[32]Lakoff 1987.[33]See The problems (in History of AI)[34]Moravec 1988, pp. 15

–

16.[35]Turing 1950.

Embodied cognition216

[36]Liberman N, Trope Y. (2008-11-21). "The Psychology of Transcending the Here and Now".

“

Science

”

322

: 1201

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1205.doi:10.1126/science.1161958. PMID 19023074.[37]Longo, M. R. (2009). "What's embodied and how can we tell?".

European Journal of Social Psychology

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: 1207

–

1209.doi:10.1002/ejsp.684.[38]Daum, M. M.; Sommerville, J. A., & Prinz, W. (2009). "Disentangling embodied and symbolic modes of social understanding".

European Journal of Social Psychology

. 1214-1216

39

. doi:10.1002/ejsp.686.[39]Adams, F. (2010). "Embodied cognition".

Phenomena of Cognitive Science

9

: 619

–

628. doi:10.1007/s11097-010-9175-x.[40]Wilson, Margaret (2002), "Six Views of Embodied Cognition" (http://philosophy.

wisc.

edu/shapiro/PHIL951/951articles/wilson.

htm),

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

9

(4): 625

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636,[41]Gary Cziko (1995) Without Miracles: Universal Selection Theory and the Second Darwinian Revolution (http://faculty.

ed.

uiuc.

edu/ g-cziko/wm/) (MIT Press)

References

•Brooks, Rodney A. (1999).

Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI

. Cambridge MA: The MITPress. ISBN 0262522632•Clark, Andy (1997).

Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again

. Cambridge MA: The MITPress. ISBN 0262531569•Damasio, Antonio (1999).

The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness

.New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 0156010755•Edelman, G (2004).

Wider than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness

. Yale University Press. ISBN0-300-10229-1•Gallagher, S. (2005).

How the Body Shapes the Mind

. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199204160.•Hendriks-Jansen, Horst (1996)

Catching Ourselves in the Act: Situated Activity, Interactive Emergence, Evolution, and Human Thought

. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 0262082462•Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark (1980)

Metaphors We Live By.

University of Chicago Press. ISBN0226468011•Lakoff, George (1987)

Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind

Universityof Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-46804-6.•Lakoff, George and Turner, Mark (1989)

More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor

. Universityof Chicago Press. ISBN 0226468127•Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark (1999)

Philosophy In The Flesh: the Embodied Mind and its Challenge toWestern Thought

. Basic Books. ISBN 0465056741•Lakoff, George and Nuñez, Rafael. (2001).

Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being

. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0465037712•Maturana, Humberto and Varela, Francisco (1987)

The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of HumanUnderstanding.

Boston: Shambhala. ISBN 0-87773-373-2•Pfeifer, R. (2001)

Understanding Intelligence

. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 0262161818•Pfeifer, R. and Bongard, J. (2006)

How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence

.Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-16239-5•Varela, Francisco J., Thompson, Evan T., and Rosch, Eleanor. (1992).

The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Scienceand Human Experience

. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 0262720213•Greeno, J.G & Moore, J.L. (1993). Situativity and symbols: Response to Vera and Simon. Cognitive Science, 17,49-59.•Wilson, M. (2001). The case for sensorimotor coding in working memory. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, *,44-57.

Embodied cognition217

External links

•The Situated Body (http://www.

janushead.org/9-2/), a special issue of

Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology and the Arts

.Guest edited by Shaun Gallagher.•Six Views of Embodied Cognition (http://philosophy.wisc.edu/shapiro/PHIL951/951articles/wilson.

htm)•Embodiment and Experientialism (http://zakros.ucsd.edu/~trohrer/handbookch1rohrerfinaldraft.

pdf) from the

Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics

(pdf)•Embodied Cognition: A Field Guide (pdf) (http://www.

dcs.shef.

ac.

uk/~amanda/anderson.

pdf) - from anArtificial Intelligence perspective•Where the Action Is (http://www.dourish.

com/embodied/) by Paul Dourish- for applications tohuman-computer interaction.•Pragmatism, Ideology, and Embodiment: William James and the Philosophical Foundations of Embodiment(http://zakros.

ucsd.

edu/~trohrer/metaphor/embodiment.

pdf) by Tim Rohrer•Visual Causality (http://www.allpsych.

uni-giessen.

de/dk/reprints/LIBRI.

2001.

pdf) - an article on theembodied nature of causal perception•Society for the Scientific Study of Embodiment (http://www.

ssse.

org)•Embodied Cognition - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://www.

iep.utm.

edu/e/embodcog.

htm)•2001 Summary of how the embodiment hypothesis of cognitive linguistics has begun to interact with theories of embodiment in fields ranging from cognitive anthropology to cognitive neuroscience (http://zakros.

ucsd.

edu/ ~trohrer/embodiment.

pdf)•Goddard College's Embodiment Studies Web Resources (http://web.

goddard.

edu/embodiment/)•Goddard College's Individualized MA program where students may focus in Embodiment Studies (http://www.goddard.

edu/masterarts_individualized)•Society for the Scientific Study of Embodiment (http://www.

ssse.

org)•Embodiment Resources - for those researching into embodiment, particularly as it relates to phenomenology,sociology and cognitive neuroscience. (http://www.embodiment.org.

uk/)•The Embodiment Wiki (http://www.

embodimentwiki.

org/)

Embodied cognitive science218

Embodied cognitive science

For approaches to cognitive science that emphasize the embodied mind, see embodied mind thesis

Embodied Cognitive Science

is an interdisciplinary field of research, the aim of which is to explain the mechanismsunderlying intelligent behavior. It comprises three main methodologies: 1) the modeling of psychological andbiological systems in a holistic manner that considers the mind and body as a single entity, 2) the formation of acommon set of general principles of intelligent behavior, and 3) the experimental use of robotic agents in controlledenvironments.Embodied cognitive science borrows heavily from embodied philosophy and the related research fields of cognitivescience, psychology, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. From the perspective of neuroscience, research in thisfield was led by Gerald Edelman of the Neurosciences Institute at La Jolla, the late Francisco Varela of CNRS inFrance, and J. A. Scott Kelso of Florida Atlantic University. From the perspective of psychology, research byMichael Turvey and Eleanor Rosch. From the perspective of language acquisition, Eric Lenneberg and Philip Rubinat Haskins Laboratories. From the perspective of autonomous agent design, early work is sometimes attributed toRodney Brooks or Valentino Braitenberg. From the perspective of artificial intelligence, see

Understanding Intelligence

by Rolf Pfeifer and Christian Scheier or

How the body shapes the way we think

, also by Rolf Pfeifer andJosh C. Bongard. From the perspective of philosophy see Andy Clark, Shaun Gallagher, and Evan Thompson.Turing proposed that a machine may need a human-like body to think and speak:

It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that moneycan buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. That process could follow the normalteaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again, I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried

(Turing, 1950).

[1]

Traditional Cognitive Theory

Embodied cognitive science is an alternative theory to cognition in which it minimizes appeals to computationaltheory of mind in favor of greater emphasis on how an organism's body determines how and what it thinks.Traditional cognitive theory is based mainly around symbol manipulation, in which certain inputs are fed into aprocessing unit that produces an output. These inputs follow certain rules of syntax, from which the processing unitfinds semantic meaning. Thus, an appropriate output is produced. For example, a human's sensory organs are itsinput devices, and the stimuli obtained from the external environment are fed into the nervous system which servesas the processing unit. From here, the nervous system is able to read the sensory information because it follows asyntactic structure, thus an output is created. This output then creates bodily motions and brings forth behavior andcognition. Of particular note is that cognition is sealed away in the brain, meaning that mental cognition is cut off from the external world and is only possible by the input of sensory information.

The Embodied Cognitive Approach

Embodied cognitive science differs from the traditionalist approach in that it denies the input-output system. This ischiefly due to the problems presented by the Homunculus argument, which concluded that semantic meaning couldnot be derived from symbols without some kind of inner interpretation. If some little man in a person's headinterpreted incoming symbols, then who would interpret the little man's inputs? Because of the specter of an infiniteregress, the traditionalist model began to seem less plausible. Thus, embodied cognitive science aims to avoid thisproblem by defining cognition in three ways.

[2]

Embodied cognitive science219

Physical Attributes of the Body

The first aspect of embodiedcognition examines the role of the physical body, particularly how its properties affectits ability to think. This part attempts to overcome the symbol manipulation component that is a feature of thetraditionalist model. Depth perception for instance can be better explained under the embodied approach due to thesheer complexity of the action. Depth perception requires that the brain detect the disparate retinal images obtainedby the distance of the two eyes. In addition, body and head cues complicate this further. When the head is turned in agiven direction, objects in the foreground will appear to move against objects in the background. From this, it is saidthat some kind of visual processing is occurring without the need of any kind of symbol manipulation. This isbecause the objects appearing to move the foreground are simply appearing to move. This observation concludesthen that depth can be perceived with no intermediate symbol manipulation necessary.A more poignant example exists through examining auditory perception. Generally speaking the greater the distancebetween the ears, the greater the possible auditory acuity. Also relevant is the amount of density in between the ears,for the strength of the frequency wave alters as it passes through a given medium. The brain's auditory system takesthese factors into account as it process information, but again without any need for a symbolic manipulation system.This is because the distance between the ears for example does not need symbols to represent it. The distance itself creates the necessary opportunity for greater auditory acuity. The amount of density between the ears is similar, inthat it is the actual amount itself that simply forms the opportunity for frequency alteration. Thus under considerationof the physical properties of the body, a symbolic system is unnecessary and an unhelpful metaphor.

The Body's Role in the Cognitive Process

The second aspect draws heavily from George Lakoff's and Mark Johnson's work on concepts. They argued thathumans use metaphors whenever possible to better explain their external world. Humans also have a basic stock of concepts in which other concepts can be derived from. These basic concepts include spatial orientations such as up,down, front, and back. Humans can understand what these concepts mean because they can directly experience themfrom their own bodies. For example, because human movement revolves around standing erect and moving the bodyin an up-down motion, humans innately have these concepts of up and down. Lakoff and Johnson contend this issimilar with other spatial orientations such as front and back too. As mentioned earlier, these basic stocks of spatialconcepts are the basis in which other concepts are constructed. Happy and sad for instance are seen now as being upor down respectively. When someone says they are feeling down, what they are really saying is that they feel sad forexample. Thus the point here is that true understanding of these concepts is contingent on whether one can have anunderstanding of the human body. So the argument goes that if one lacked a human body, they could not possiblyknow what up or down could mean, or how it could relate to emotional states.

‘

[I]magine a spherical being living outside of any gravitational field, with no knowledge or imagination of anyother kind of experience. What could UP possibly mean to such a being?'

[3]

While this does not mean that such beings would be incapable of expressing emotions in other words, it does meanthat they would express emotions differently than humans do. Human concepts of happiness and sadness would bedifferent because human would have different bodies. So then an organism's body directly affects how it can think,because it uses metaphors related to its body as the basis of concepts.

Interaction of Local Environment

A third component of the embodied approach looks at how agents use their immediate environment in cognitiveprocessing. Meaning, the local environment is seen as an actual extension of the body's cognitive process. Theexample of a personal digital assistant (PDA) is used to better imagine this. Echoing functionalism (philosophy of mind), this point claims that mental states are individuated by their role in a much larger system. So under thispremise, the information on a PDA is similar to the information stored in the brain. So then if one thinks informationin the brain constitutes mental states, then it must follow that information in the PDA is a cognitive state too.

Embodied cognitive science220Consider also the role of pen and paper in a complex multiplication problem. The pen and paper are so involved inthe cognitive process of solving the problem that it seems ridiculous to say they are somehow different from theprocess, in very much the same way the PDA is used for information like the brain. Another example examines howhumans control and manipulate their environment so that cognitive tasks can be better performs. Leaving one's carkeys in a familiar place so they aren't missed for instance, or using landmarks to navigate in an unfamiliar city. Thus,humans incorporate aspects of their environment to aid in their cognitive functioning.

Examples of the Value of Embodied Approach

The value of the embodiment approach in the context of cognitive science is perhaps best understood by AndyClark

[4]

. He makes the claim that the brain alone should not be the single focus for the scientific study of cognitionIt is increasingly clear that, in a wide variety of cases, the individual brain should not be the sole locus of cognitive scientific interest. Cognition is not a phenomenon that can be successfully studied whilemarginalizing the roles of body, world and action.

[5]

The following examples used by Clark will better illustrate how embodied thinking is becoming apparent inscientific thinking.

Bluefin Tuna

Thunnus or bluefin tuna long baffled conventional biologists with its incredible abilities to accelerate quickly andattain great speeds. A biological examination of the tuna shows it is simply not capable of such feats. However, ananswer can be found when taking the tuna's embodied state into account. The bluefin tuna is able to take advantageof and exploit its local environment by finding naturally occurring currents to increase its speed. The tuna also usesits own physical body for this end as well, by utilizing its tailfin to create the necessary vortices and pressure so itcan accelerate and maintain high speeds. Thus, the bluefin tuna is actively using its local environment for its ownends through the attributes of its physical body.

Robots

Clark uses the example of the hopping robot constructed by Raibert and Hodgins to demonstrate further the value of the embodiment paradigm. These robots were essentially vertical cylinders with a single hopping foot. The challengeof managing the robot's behavior can be daunting because in addition to the intricacies of the program itself, therewere also the mechanical matters regarding how the foot ought to be constructed so that it could hop. An embodiedapproach makes it easier to see that in order for this robot to function, it must be able to exploit its system to thefullest. That is, the robot's systems should be seen as having dynamic characteristics as opposed to the traditionalview that it is merely a command center that just executes actions.

Vision

Clark distinguishes between two kinds of vision, animate and pure vision. Pure vision is an idea that is typicallyassociated with classical artificial intelligence, in which vision is used to create a rich world model so that thoughtand reason can be used to fully explore the inner model. In other words, pure vision passively creates the externalperceivable world so that the faculties of reason can be better used introspectively. Animate vision, by contrast, seesvision as the means by which real-time action can commence. Animate vision is then more of a vehicle by whichvisual information is obtained so that actions can be undertaken. Clark points to animate vision as an example of embodiment, because it uses both biological and local environment cues to create an active intelligent process.Consider the Clark's example of going to the drugstore to buy some Kodak film. In your mind, you are familiar withthe Kodak loco and its trademark gold color. Thus, you use your incoming visual stimuli to navigate around thedrugstore until you find your film. Therefore, vision should not be seen as a passive system but rather an activeretrieval device that intelligently uses sensory information and local environmental cues to perform specific

Embodied cognitive science221real-world actions.

Affordance

Inspired by the work of the American psychologist James J. Gibson, this next example emphasizes the importance of action-relevant sensory information, bodily movement, and local environment cues. These three concepts are unifiedby the concept of affordances, which are possibilities of action provided by the physical world to a given agent.These are in turn determined by the agent's physical body, capacities, and the overall action-related properties of thelocal environment as well. Clark uses the example of an outfielder in baseball to better illustrate the concept of affordance. Traditional computational models would claim that an outfielder attempting to catch a fly-ball can becalculated by variables such as the running speed of the outfielder and the arc of the baseball. However, Gibson'swork shows that a simpler method is possible. The outfielder can catch the ball so long as they adjust their runningspeed so that the ball continually moves in a straight line in their field of vision. Note that this strategy uses variousaffordances that are contingent upon the success of the outfielder, including their physical body composition, theenvironment of the baseball field, and the sensory information obtained by the outfielder.Clark points out here that the latter strategy of catching the ball as opposed to the former has significant implicationsfor perception. The affordance approach proves to be non-linear because it relies upon spontaneous real-timeadjustments. On the contrary, the former method of computing the arc of the ball is linear as it follows a sequence of perception, calculation and performing action. Thus, the affordance approach challenges the traditional view of perception by arguing against the notion that computation and introspection are necessary. Instead, it ought to bereplaced with the idea that perception constitutes a continuous equilibrium of action adjustment between the agentand the world. Ultimately Clark does not expressly claim this is certain but he does observe the affordance approachcan explain adaptive response satisfactorily.

[6]

This is because they utilize environmental cues made possible byperceptual information that is actively used in the real-time by the agent.

General principles of intelligent behavior

In the formation of general principles of intelligent behavior, Pfeifer intended to be contrary to older principles givenin Traditional Artificial Intelligence. The most dramatic difference is that the principles are applicable only tosituated robotic agents in the real world, a domain where Traditional Artificial Intelligence showed the least promise.Principle of Cheap Design and Redundancy: Pfeifer realized that implicit assumptions made by engineers oftensubstantially influence a control architecture's complexity.

[7]

This insight is reflected in discussions of the scalabilityproblem in robotics. The internal processing needed for some bad architectures can grow out of proportion to newtasks needed of an agent.One of the primary reasons for scalability problems is that the amount of programming and knowledgeengineering that the robot designers have to perform grows very rapidly with the complexity of therobot's tasks. There is mounting evidence that pre-programming cannot be the solution to the scalabilityproblem ... The problem is that programmers introduce too many hidden assumptions in the robot'scode.

[8]

The proposed solutions are to have the agent exploit the inherent physics of its environment, to exploit theconstraints of its niche, and to have agent morphology based on parsimony and the principle of Redundancy.Redundancy reflects the desire for the error-correction of signals afforded by duplicating like channels. Additionally,it reflects the desire to exploit the associations between sensory modalities. (See redundant modalities). In terms of design, this implies that redundancy should be introduced with respect not only to one sensory modality but toseveral.

[9]

It has been suggested that the fusion and transfer of knowledge between modalities can be the basis of reducing the size of the sense data taken from the real world.

[10]

This again addresses the scalability problem.

Embodied cognitive science222Principle of Parallel, Loosely-coupled Processes: An alternative to hierarchical methods of knowledge and actionselection. This design principle differs most importantly from the Sense-Think-Act cycle of traditional AI. Since itdoes not involve this famous cycle, it is not affected by the Frame problem.Principle of Sensory-Motor Coordination: Ideally, internal mechanisms in an agent should give rise to things likememory and choice-making in an emergent fashion, rather than being prescriptively programmed from thebeginning. These kinds of things are allowed to emerge as the agent interacts with the environment. The motto is,build fewer assumptions into the agent's controller now, so that learning can be more robust and idiosyncratic in thefuture.Principle of Ecological Balance: This is more a theory than a principle, but its implications are widespread. Its claimis that the internal processing of an agent cannot be made more complex unless there is a corresponding increase incomplexity of the motors, limbs, and sensors of the agent. In other words, the extra complexity added to the brain of a simple robot will not create any discernible change in its behavior. The robot's morphology must already containthe complexity in itself to allow enough "breathing room" for more internal processing to develop.The Value Principle: This was the architecture developed in the Darwin III robot of Gerald Edelman. It relies heavilyon connectionism.

Critical responses

Traditionalist response to local environment claim

A traditionalist may argue that objects may be used to aid in cognitive processes, but this does not mean they are partof a cognitive system.

[11]

Eyeglasses are used to aid in the visual process, but to say they are a part of a larger systemwould completely redefine what is meant by a visual system. However, supporters of the embodied approach couldmake the case that if objects in the environment play the functional role of mental states, then the items themselvesshould not be counted among the mental states.

References

[1]

Turing, Alan (October 1950), "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"

(http://loebner.

net/Prizef/TuringArticle.

html)

,

Mind

LIX

(236): 433

–

460, doi:10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433, ISSN 0026-4423, , retrieved 2008-08-18

[2]

Shapiro, Larry (March 2007). "The Embodied Cognition Programme"

(http://philosophy.

wisc.

edu/shapiro/HomePage/ embodiedcognition.

pdf)

.

Philosophy Compass

2

(2): 340. doi:10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00064.x. .

[3]

Shapiro, Larry (March 2007). "The Embodied Cognition Programme"

(http://philosophy.

wisc.

edu/shapiro/HomePage/ embodiedcognition.

pdf)

.

Philosophy Compass

2

(2): 342. doi:10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00064.x. .

[4]

Clark, Andy (September 1999). "An Embodied Cognitive Science?"

(http://psy.

haifa.

ac.

il/~ep/Lecture Files/AI/Secure/ Download/Clark Andy - Embodied Cog Science (1999 Trends).

pdf)

.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

3

(9): 345

–

351. . Retrieved27 June 2011.

[5]

Clark, Andy (September 1999). "An Embodied Cognitive Science?"

(http://psy.

haifa.

ac.

il/~ep/Lecture Files/AI/Secure/ Download/Clark Andy - Embodied Cog Science (1999 Trends).

pdf)

.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

3

(9): 350. . Retrieved 27June 2011.

[6]

Clark, Andy (September 1999). "An Embodied Cognitive Science?"

(http://psy.

haifa.

ac.

il/~ep/Lecture Files/AI/Secure/ Download/Clark Andy - Embodied Cog Science (1999 Trends).

pdf)

.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

3

(9): 346. . Retrieved 27June 2011.

[7]

Pfeifer, R., Scheier, C.,

Understanding Intelligence

(MIT Press, 2001) ISBN 0-262-66125-X (436)

[8]

Stoytchev, A. (2006). Five Basic Principles of Developmental Robotics

(http://www.

cs.

iastate.

edu/~alex/papers/ NIPS_Workshop_2006.

pdf)

NIPS 2006 Workshop on Grounding Perception, Knowledge and Cognition inSensori-Motor Experience. Department of Computer Science, Iowa State U

[9]

Pfeifer, R., Scheier, C.,

Understanding Intelligence

(MIT Press, 2001) ISBN 0-262-66125-X (448)

[10]

Konijn, Paul (2007). Summer Workshop on Multi-Sensory Modalities in Cognitive Science

(http://www.diracproject.

org/workshop-2007/pdf/DIRAC-Summer-Workshop.

pdf)

Detection and Identification of Rare Audiovisual Cues.DIRAC EU IP IST project, Switzerland.

[11]

Shapiro, Larry (March 2007). "The Embodied Cognition Programme"

(http://philosophy.

wisc.

edu/shapiro/HomePage/ embodiedcognition.

pdf)

.

Philosophy Compass

2

(2): 343. doi:10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00064.x. .

Embodied cognitive science223

Further reading

•Braitenberg, Valentino (1986).

Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology

. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.ISBN 0262521121•Brooks, Rodney A. (1999).

Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI

. Cambridge, MA: The MITPress. ISBN 0262522632•Edelman, G.

Wider than the Sky

(Yale University Press, 2004) ISBN 0-300-10229-1•Fowler, C., Rubin, P. E., Remez, R. E., & Turvey, M. T. (1980). Implications for speech production of a generaltheory of action. In B. Butterworth (Ed.),

Language Production, Vol. I: Speech and Talk

(pp. 373

–

420). NewYork: Academic Press. ISBN 0121475018•Lenneberg, Eric H. (1967).

Biological Foundations of Language

. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0471526266•Pfeifer, R. and Bongard J. C.,

How the body shapes the way we think: a new view of intelligence

(The MIT Press,2007). ISBN 0-262-16239-3

External links

•AI lectures from Tokyo hosted by Rolf Pfeiffer (http://tokyolectures.org/lectures)•synthetic neural modelling in DARWIN IV (http://www.pnas.

org/cgi/content/abstract/89/15/7267)•Society for the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (http://www.isab.

org.

uk)

Embodied Embedded Cognition

(EEC) is a philosophical theoretical position in cognitive science, closely relatedto situated cognition, embodied cognition, embodied cognitive science and dynamical systems theory. The theorystates that intelligent behaviour emerges out of the interplay between brain, body and world. The world is not just the'play-ground' on which the brain is acting. Rather, brain, body and world are equally important factors in theexplanation of how particular intelligent behaviours come about in practice. There are concerns about whether EECconstitutes a novel and substantive approach to cognition or whether it is merely a manifestation of frustration withthe classical cognitivist approach.

Embodiment and Embeddedness

EEC is divided into two aspects: embodiment and embeddedness (or situatedness).

Embodiment

refers to the idea that the bodies' internal milieu (a.o. homeostatic and hormonal states) heavilyinfluences the higher 'cognitive' processes in the brain, presumably via the emotional system (see e.g. AntonioDamasio's theory of somatic markers). To put it simply: the state of your body is a direct factor of importance on thekinds of cognitive processes that may arise in the higher parts of your brain.

Embeddedness

refers to the idea that physical interaction between the body and the world strongly constrain thepossible behaviours of the organism, which in turn influences (indeed, partly constitutes) the cognitive processes thatemerge out of the interaction between organism and world.The theory is an explicit reaction to the currently dominant cognitivist paradigm, which states that cognitive systemsare essentially computational-representational systems (like computer software), processing input and generatingoutput (behaviour) on the basis of internal information processing. In cognitivism, the causal root of behaviour lies inthe 'virtual' processes governed by the software that runs on our brains. The brain is purely the hardware on whichthe software is implemented. The body (sensors and actors) are purely input-output devices that are in service of thebrain. The world is merely the play-ground (the object) in which the cognitive agent acts.

Epistemology225

Epistemology

i

/

ɪ

-

ˌ

p

ɪ

st

ɪ

-

ˈ

m

ɒ

l

ə

d

ʒ

i/ (from Greek

ἐπιστήμη (epistēmē)

, meaning "knowledge, science", and

λόγος(logos)

, meaning "study of") is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge.

[1]

[2]

It addresses the questions:•What is knowledge?•How is knowledge acquired?•How do we know what we know?Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to connectednotions such as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well asskepticism about different knowledge claims.The term was introduced by the Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier (1808

–

1864).

[3]

In physics, the concept of epistemology is vital in the modern interpretation of quantum mechanics , and is used bymany authors to analyse the works of dominant physicists such as Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, Max Born andWolfgang Pauli.In philosophy, epistemology refers to the study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge. The field issometimes referred to as the theory of knowledge. Epistemology has a long history, beginning with the ancientGreeks and continuing to the present. Epistemology (how we know things) is combined with ontology (what thingsexist) to constitute the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics. The other three branches of philosophy areethics (which attempts to understand and prescribe conduct), politics (which attempts to describe how we shouldinteract with one another), and aesthetics (which discusses questions of beauty and taste).

Knowledge

Knowledge that, knowledge how, and knowledge by acquaintance

In this article, and in epistemology in general, the kind of knowledge usually discussed is propositional knowledge,also known as "knowledge that." This is distinct from "knowledge how" and "acquaintance-knowledge." Forexample: in mathematics, it is known

that

2 + 2 = 4, but there is also knowing

how

to add two numbers and knowinga

person

(e.g., oneself),

place

(e.g., one's hometown),

thing

(e.g., cars), or

activity

(e.g., addition). Some (though notall) philosophers think there is an important distinction between "knowing that," "knowing how," and"acquaintance-knowledge," with epistemology primarily interested in the first.

[4]

Bertrand Russell is famous for distinguishing "knowledge by description" (a form of knowledge that) and"knowledge by acquaintance" in

Problems of Philosophy.

Gilbert Ryle is often credited with emphasizing thedistinction between knowing how and knowing that in

The Concept of Mind.

In

Personal Knowledge,

MichaelPolanyi argues for the epistemological relevance of knowledge how and knowledge that; using the example of theact of balance involved in riding a bicycle, he suggests that the theoretical knowledge of the physics involved inmaintaining a state of balance cannot substitute for the practical knowledge of how to ride, and that it is important tounderstand how both are established and grounded. This position is essentially Ryle's, who argued that a failure toacknowledge the distinction between knowledge that and knowledge how leads to vicious regresses.In recent times, some epistemologists (Sosa, Greco, Kvanvig, Zagzebski) have argued that epistemology shouldevaluate people's properties (i.e., intellectual virtues) and not just the properties of propositions or propositionalmental attitudes. One reason is that higher forms of cognitive success (i.e., understanding) are said to involvefeatures that can't be evaluated from a justified true belief view of knowledge.

Epistemology226

Belief

Euler diagram representing a definition of knowledge.

Statements of "belief" sometimes mean the speaker has faith thatsomething would prove to be useful or successful in somesense

—

perhaps the speaker might "believe in" his or her favouritefootball team. This is not the kind of belief usually addressed withinepistemology. The kind dealt with is when "to believe something"simply means any cognitive content held as true. For example, tobelieve that the sky is blue is to think that the proposition "The sky isblue" is true, even if the sky is red.

Truth

Whether someone's belief is true is not a prerequisite for its belief. On the other hand, if something is actually

known

,then it categorically cannot be false. For example, a person believes that a particular bridge is safe enough to supporthim, and attempts to cross it; unfortunately, the bridge collapses under his weight. It could be said that he

believed

that the bridge was safe, but that this belief was mistaken. It would

not

be accurate to say that he

knew

that the bridgewas safe, because plainly it was not. By contrast, if the bridge actually supported his weight then he might say he

“

thought

”

that the bridge was safe, and now after proving it to himself, he knows.Epistemologists argue over whether belief is the proper truth-bearer. Some would rather describe knowledge as asystem of justified true propositions, and others as a system of justified true sentences. But belief is the mostcommonly invoked truth bearer, since Plato's day.

Justification

In many of Plato's dialogues, such as the

Meno

, and in particular the

Theaetetus

, Socrates considers a number of theories as to what knowledge is, the last being that knowledge is true belief that has been "given an account of"

—

meaning explained or defined in some way. According to the theory that knowledge is justified true belief, in orderto know that a given proposition is true, one must not only believe the relevant trueproposition, but one must alsohave a good reason for doing so. One implication of this would be that no one would gain knowledge just bybelieving something that happened to be true. For example, an ill person with no medical training, but with agenerally optimistic attitude, might believe that he will recover from his illness quickly. Nevertheless, even if thisbelief turned out to be true, the patient would not have

known

that he would get well since his belief lacked justification. The definition of knowledge as justified true belief was widely accepted until the 1960s. At this time, apaper written by the American philosopher Edmund Gettier provoked major widespread discussion. See theories of justification for other views on the idea.

The Gettier problem

Edmund Gettier is remembered for his 1963 argument, which called into question the theory of knowledge that hadbeen dominant among philosophers for thousands of years.

[5]

In a few pages, Gettier argued that there are situationsin which one's belief may be justified and true, yet fail to count as knowledge. That is, Gettier contended that while justified belief in a true proposition is necessary for that proposition to be known, it is not sufficient. As in thediagram above, a true proposition can be believed by an individual (red region) but still not fall within the"knowledge" category (yellow region).According to Gettier, there are certain circumstances in which one does not have knowledge, even when all of theabove conditions are met. Gettier proposed two thought experiments, which have come to be known as "Gettiercases," as counterexamples to the classical account of knowledge. One of the cases involves two men, Smith andJones, who are awaiting the results of their applications for the same job. Each man has ten coins in his pocket.

Epistemology227Smith has excellent reasons to believe that Jones will get the job and, furthermore, knows that Jones has ten coins inhis pocket (he recently counted them). From this Smith infers, "the man who will get the job has ten coins in hispocket." However, Smith is unaware that he also has ten coins in his own pocket. Furthermore, Smith, not Jones, isgoing to get the job. While Smith has strong evidence to believe that Jones will get the job, he is wrong. Smith has a justified true belief that a man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job; however, according to Gettier, Smith doesnot

know

that a man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job, because Smith's belief is "...true by virtue of thenumber of coins in

Jones's

pocket, while Smith does not know how many coins are in Smith's pocket, and bases hisbelief...on a count of the coins in Jones's pocket, whom he falsely believes to be the man who will get the job." (see

[5]

p. 122.) These cases fail to be knowledge because the subject's belief is justified, but only happens to be true byvirtue of luck. In other words, he made the correct choice (in this case predicting an outcome) for the wrong reasons.

Responses to Gettier

The responses to Gettier have been varied. Usually, they have involved substantive attempts to provide a definitionof knowledge different from the classical one, either by recasting knowledge as justified true belief with someadditional fourth condition, or as something else altogether.

Infallibilism, indefeasibility

In one response to Gettier, the American philosopher Richard Kirkham has argued that the only definition of knowledge that could ever be immune to all counterexamples is the infallibilist one.

[6]

To qualify as an item of knowledge, goes the theory, a belief must not only be true and justified, the justification of the belief must

necessitate

its truth. In other words, the justification for the belief must be infallible. (See

Fallibilism,

below, formore information.)Yet another possible candidate for the fourth condition of knowledge is

indefeasibility.

Defeasibility theorymaintains that there should be no overriding or defeating truths for the reasons that justify one's belief. For example,suppose that person

S

believes he saw Tom Grabit steal a book from the library and uses this to justify the claim thatTom Grabit stole a book from the library. A possible defeater or overriding proposition for such a claim could be atrue proposition like, "Tom Grabit's identical twin Sam is currently in the same town as Tom." When no defeaters of one's justification exist, a subject would be epistemically justified.The Indian philosopher B K Matilal has drawn on the Navya-Nyaya fallibilism tradition to respond to the Gettierproblem. Nyaya theory distinguishes between

know p

and

know that one knows p

–

these are different events, withdifferent causal conditions. The second level is a sort of implicit inference that usually follows immediately theepisode of knowing p (knowledge

simpliciter

). The Gettier case is analyzed by referring to a view of Gangesha (13thc.), who takes any true belief to be knowledge; thus a true belief acquired through a wrong route may just beregarded as knowledge simpliciter on this view. The question of justification arises only at the second level, whenone considers the knowledgehood of the acquired belief. Initially, there is lack of uncertainty, so it becomes a truebelief. But at the very next moment, when the hearer is about to embark upon the venture of knowing whether he

knows p

, doubts may arise. "If, in some Gettier-like cases, I am wrong in my inference about the knowledgehood of the given occurrent belief (for the evidence may be pseudo-evidence), then I am mistaken about the truth of mybelief

–

and this is in accord with Nyaya fallibilism: not all knowledge-claims can be sustained."

[7]

Epistemology228

Reliabilism

Reliabilism is a theory that suggests a belief is justified (or otherwise supported in such a way as to count towardsknowledge) only if it is produced by processes that typically yield a sufficiently high ratio of true to false beliefs. Inother words, this theory states that a true belief counts as knowledge only if it is produced by a reliablebelief-forming process.Reliabilism has been challenged by Gettier cases. Another argument that challenges reliabilism, like the Gettier cases(although it was not presented in the same short article as the Gettier cases), is the case of Henry and the barnfaçades. In the thought experiment, a man, Henry, is driving along and sees a number of buildings that resemblebarns. Based on his perception of one of these, he concludes that he has just seen barns. While he has seen one, andthe perception he based his belief on was of a real barn, all the other barn-like buildings he saw were façades.Theoretically, Henry doesn't know that he has seen a barn, despite both his belief that he has seen one being true andhis belief being formed on the basis of a reliable process (i.e. his vision), since he only acquired his true belief byaccident.

[8]

Other responses

The American philosopher Robert Nozick has offered the following definition of knowledge:

S

knows that

P

if and only if:•

P

;•

S

believes that

P

;•if

P

were false,

S

would not believe that

P

;•if

P

is true,

S

will believe that

P

.

[9]

Nozick believed that the third subjunctive condition served to address cases of the sort described by Gettier. Nozickfurther claims this condition addresses a case of the sort described by D. M. Armstrong:

[10]

A father believes his soninnocent of committing a particular crime, both because of faith in his son and (now) because he has seen presentedin the courtroom a conclusive demonstration of his son's innocence. His belief via the method of the courtroomsatisfies the four subjunctive conditions, but his faith-based belief does not. If his son were guilty, he would stillbelieve him innocent, on the basis of faith in his son; this would violate the third subjunctive condition.The British philosopher Simon Blackburn has criticized this formulation by suggesting that we do not want to acceptas knowledge beliefs, which, while they "track the truth" (as Nozick's account requires), are not held for appropriatereasons. He says that "we do not want to award the title of knowing something to someone who is only meeting theconditions through a defect, flaw, or failure, compared with someone else who is not meeting the conditions.". Inaddition to this, externalist accounts of knowledge, like Nozick's, are often forced to reject closure in cases where itis intuitively valid.Timothy Williamson has advanced a theory of knowledge according to which knowledge is not justified true belief plus some extra condition(s). In his book

Knowledge and its Limits,

Williamson argues that the concept of knowledge cannot be analyzed into a set of other concepts

—

instead, it is

sui generis.

Thus, though knowledgerequires justification, truth, and belief, the word "knowledge" can't be, according to Williamson's theory, accuratelyregarded as simply shorthand for "justified true belief."Alvin Goldman writes in his Causal Theory of Knowing that in order for knowledge to truly exist there must be acausal chain between the proposition and the belief of that proposition.

Epistemology229

Externalism and internalism

Part of the debate over the nature of knowledge is a debate between epistemological externalists on the one hand,and epistemological internalists on the other. Externalists think that factors deemed "external", meaning outside of the psychological states of those who gain knowledge, can be conditions of knowledge. For example, an externalistresponse to the Gettier problem is to say that, in order for a justified true belief to count as knowledge, it must becaused, in the right sort of way, by relevant facts. Such causation, to the extent that it is "outside" the mind, wouldcount as an external, knowledge-yielding condition. Internalists, contrariwise, claim that all knowledge-yieldingconditions are within the psychological states of those who gain knowledge.While unfamiliar with the internalist/externalist debate himself, many point to René Descartes as an early example of the internalist approach to justification. He wrote that, because the only method by which we perceive the externalworld is through our senses, and that, because the senses are not infallible, we should not consider our concept of knowledge to be infallible. The only way to find anything that could be described as "indubitably true," headvocates, would be to see things "clearly and distinctly".

[11]

He argued that if there is an omnipotent, good beingwho made the world, then it's reasonable to believe that people are made with the ability to know. However, thisdoes not mean that man's ability to know is perfect. God gave man the ability to know, but not omniscience.Descartes said that man must use his capacities for knowledge correctly and carefully through methodologicaldoubt.

[12]

The phrase "Cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am) is also commonly associated with Descartes'theory, because in his own methodological doubt, doubting everything he previously knew in order to start from ablank slate, the first thing that he could not logically bring himself to doubt was his own existence: "I do not exist"would be a contradiction in terms; the act of saying that one does not exist assumes that someone must be making thestatement in the first place. Though Descartes could doubt his senses, his body and the world around him, he couldnot deny his own existence, because he was able to doubt and must exist in order to do so. Even if some "evilgenius" were to be deceiving him, he would have to exist in order to be deceived. This one sure point provided himwith what he would call his Archimedean point, in order to further develop his foundation for knowledge. Simplyput, Descartes' epistemological justification depended upon his indubitable belief in his own existence and his clearand distinct knowledge of god.

[13]

Acquiring knowledge

The second question that will be dealt with is the question of how knowledge is acquired. This area of epistemologycovers:1.Issues concerning epistemic distinctions such as that between experience and apriori as means of creatingknowledge.2.Distinguish between synthesis and analysis used as means of proof 3.Debates such as the one between empiricists and rationalists.4.What is called "the regress problem"

Epistemology230

A priori

and

a posteriori

knowledge

The nature of this distinction has been disputed by various philosophers; however, the terms may be roughly definedas follows:•

A priori

knowledge is knowledge that is known independently of experience (that is, it is non-empirical, orarrived at beforehand, usually by reason). It will henceforth be acquired through anything that is independentfrom experience.•

A posteriori

knowledge is knowledge that is known by experience (that is, it is empirical, or arrived at afterward).

Analytic/synthetic distinction

Some propositions are such that we appear to be justified in believing them to be true just by understanding theirmeaning. For example, consider, "My father's brother is my uncle." We seem to be justified in believing it to be trueby virtue of our knowledge of what its terms mean. Philosophers call such propositions "analytic." Syntheticpropositions, on the other hand, have distinct subjects and predicates. An example of a synthetic proposition wouldbe, "My father's brother has black hair." Kant stated that all mathematical and scientifical statements are synthetic apriori propositions because they are necessarily true but our knowledge about the attributes of the mathematical orphysical subjects we can only get by logical inference.The American philosopher W. V. O. Quine, in his "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", famously challenged thedistinction, arguing that the two have a blurry boundary.

Branches or 'tendencies' within epistemology

Empiricism

In philosophy, empiricism is generally a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience, especiallyexperience based on perceptual observations by the senses. Certain forms treat all knowledge as empirical, whilesome regard disciplines such as mathematics and logic as exceptions.There are many variants of empiricism, positivism and realism being among the most commonly expounded butcentral to all empiricist epistemologies is the notion of the epistemologically privileged status of sense data.

Idealism

Idealists believe that knowledge is primarily (at least in some areas) acquired by

a priori

processes or is innate

—

forexample, in the form of concepts not derived from experience. The relevant theoretical processes often go by thename "intuition". The relevant theoretical concepts may purportedly be part of the structure of the human mind (as inKant's theory of transcendental idealism), or they may be said to exist independently of the mind (as in Plato's theoryof Forms).The extent to which this innate human knowledge is emphasized over experience as a means to acquire knowledgevaries from idealist to idealist. Some hold that knowledge of any kind can only be gained

a priori

, while others claimthat some knowledge can also be gained

a posteriori

. Consequently, the borderline between idealist epistemologiesand others can be vague.The main concept, however, central to all idealist epistemologies is the centrality of Reason: (i.e.: 'Reason' with acapital 'R'):

a priori

Reason: Knowledge can only be, ultimately, a product of the mind and is therefore, bydefinition, 'ideal'. Ie: What is 'known' is, by definition, 'ideal'.

Epistemology231

Rationalism

By contrast with empiricism and idealism, which emphasize the epistemologically privileged status of sense data(empirical) and the primacy of reason (theoretical) respectively, modern rationalism adds a third 'system of thinking',as Gaston Bachelard has termed these areas and holds that all three are of equal importance: The empirical, thetheoretical and the

abstract

. Rationalism makes equal reference to all three systems of thinking.An example of abstract thinking is Pythagoras' concept of 'pure' geometric forms: perfect triangles, squares, circles.Etc. Another example is imaginary numbers, in mathematics.(See, esp. Scientific Rationalism (article needed) intended by its authors, Bachelard, Louis Althusser, DominiqueLecourt etc. as an attempt to walk the narrow tightrope between these two opposing dogmas of empiricism andidealism).

Constructivism

Constructivism is a viewin philosophy according to which all "knowledge is a compilation of human-madeconstructions"

[14]

,

“

not the neutral discovery of an objective truth

”

[15]

. Whereas objectivism is concerned with the

“

object of our knowledge

”

, constructivism emphasises

“

how we construct knowledge

”

.

[16]

Constructivism proposesnew definitions for knowledge and truth that form a new paradigm, based on inter-subjectivity instead of theclassical objectivity, and on viability instead of truth. Piagetian constructivism, however, believes inobjectivity

—

constructs can be validated through experimentation. The constructivist point of view is pragmatic; asVico said: "The norm of the truth is to have made it."It originated in sociology under the term "social constructionism" and has been given the name "constructivism"when referring to philosophical epistemology, though "constructionism" and "constructivism" are often usedinterchangeably. Constructivism has also emerged in the field of International Relations, where the writings of Alexander Wendt are popular. Describing the characteristic nature of International reality marked by 'anarchy' hesays, "Anarchy is what states make of it."

The regress problem

"... to justify a belief one must appeal to a further justified belief. This means that one of two things can be the case.Either there are some [epistemologically basic] beliefs that we can be justified in holding without being able to justify them on the basis of any other belief, or else for each justified belief there is an infinite regress of (potential) justification [the nebula theory]. On this theory there is no rock bottom of justification. Justification just meanders inand out through our network of beliefs, stopping nowhere."

[17]

The apparent impossibility of completing an infinitechain of reasoning is thought by some to support skepticism. Socrates said, "The only true wisdom is in knowing youknow nothing."

Response to the regress problem

Many epistemologists studying justification have attempted to argue for various types of chains of reasoning that canescape the regress problem.

Infinitism

It is not impossible for aninfinitejustificatory series to exist. This position is known as "infinitism". Infinitiststypically take the infinite series to be merely potential, in the sense that an individual may have indefinitely manyreasons available to him, without having consciously thought through all of these reasons when the need arises. Thisposition is motivated in part by the desire to avoid what is seen as the arbitrariness and circularity of its chief competitors, foundationalism and coherentism. In mathematics, an infinite series will sometimes converge

–

(this isthe basis of calculus)

–

one can therefore have an infinite series of logical arguments and analyze it for a convergent(or non-convergent) solution.

Epistemology232

Foundationalism

Foundationalists respond to the regress problem by claiming thatsome beliefs that support other beliefs do notthemselves require justification by other beliefs. Sometimes, these beliefs, labeled "foundational," are characterizedas beliefs of whose truth one is directly aware, or as beliefs that are self-justifying, or as beliefs that are infallible.According to one particularly permissive form of foundationalism, a belief may count as foundational, in the sensethat it may be presumed true until defeating evidence appears, as long as the belief seems to its believer to be true.Others have argued that a belief is justified if it is based on perception or certain

a priori

considerations.The chief criticism of foundationalism is that it allegedly leads to the arbitrary or unjustified acceptance of certainbeliefs.

[18]

Coherentism

Another response to the regress problem is coherentism, which is the rejection of theassumptionthat the regressproceeds according to a pattern of linear justification. To avoid the charge of circularity, coherentists hold that anindividual belief is justified circularly by the way it fits together (coheres) with the rest of the belief system of whichit is a part. This theory has the advantage of avoiding the infinite regress without claiming special, possibly arbitrarystatus for some particular class of beliefs. Yet, since a system can be coherent while also being wrong, coherentistsface the difficulty of ensuring that the whole system corresponds to reality. Additionally, most logicians agree thatany argument that is circular is inherently invalid. That is, arguments must be linear with conclusions that flowdirectly from state premises.

Foundherentism

A position known as "foundherentism", advanced by Susan Haack, is meant to be a unification of foundationalismand coherentism. One component of this theory is what is called the "analogy of the crossword puzzle." Whereas,say, infinitists regard the regress of reasons as "shaped" like a single line, Susan Haack has argued that it is more likea crossword puzzle, with multiple lines mutually supporting each other.

[19]

What do people know?

The last question that will be dealt with is the question of what people know. At the heart of this area of study isskepticism, with many approaches involved trying to disprove some particular form of it.

Skepticism

Skepticism is related to the question of whether a certain knowledge is possible. "If we cannot move on to point Buntil we have proved point A, and if in order to prove point A we mustestablish it with absolute certainty, then itlooks as though we will have a very hard time provingany point atall." Skeptics argue that the belief in somethingdoes not necessarily justify an assertion of knowledge of it. In this skeptics oppose foundationalism, which states thatthere have to be some basic beliefs that are justified without reference to others. The skeptical response to this cantake several approaches. First, claiming that "basic beliefs" must exist, amounts to the logical fallacy of argumentfrom ignorance combined with the slippery slope. While a foundationalist would use Münchhausen Trilemma as a justification for demanding the validity of basic beliefs, a skeptic would see no problem with admitting the result.

Developments from skepticism

Early in the 20th century, the notion that belief had to be justified as such to count as knowledge lost favour.Fallibilism is the view that knowing something does not entail certainty regarding it. Charles Sanders Peirce was afallibilist and the most developed form of fallibilism can be traced to Karl Popper (1902

–

1994) whose first book

Logik Der Forschung

(

The Logic of Scientific Discovery

), 1934 introduced a "conjectural turn" into the philosophyof science and epistemology at large. He adumbrated a school of thought that is known as Critical Rationalism with a

Epistemology233central tenet being the rejection of the idea that knowledge can ever be justified in the strong form that is sought bymost schools of thought. His two most helpful exponents are the late William W Bartley and David Miller, recentlyretired from the University of Warwick. A major source of on-line material is the Critical Rationalist website andalso the Rathouse of Rafe Champion.

Epistemic culture

Epistemic culture distinguishes between various settings of knowledge production and emphasizes their contextualaspects. Coined by Karin Knorr-Cetina in her book

Epistemic Cultures

; she defines epistemic cultures as an"amalgam of arrangements and mechanisms - bonded through affinity, necessity and historical coincidence - whichin a given field, make up how we know what we know".

[20]

The term provides the conceptual framework used todemonstrate that different laboratories do not share the same "scientific" knowledge production model, but rathereach is endowed with a different epistemic culture prescribing what is adequate knowledge and how it is obtained.Since its introduction, the term has been picked up and used by various researchers engaging in Science andtechnology studies.

Practical applications

Far from being purely academic, the study of epistemology is useful for a great many applications. It is particularlycommonly employed in issues of law where proof of guilt or innocence may be required, or when it must bedetermined whether a person knew a particular fact before taking a specific action (e.g., whether an action waspremeditated). Another practical application is to the design of user interfaces. For example, the skills, rules, andknowledge taxonomy of human behavior has been used by designers to develop systems that are compatible withmultiple "ways of knowing": abstract analytic reasoning, experience-based 'gut feelings', and 'craft' sensorimotorskills.Other common applications of epistemology include:

•Education Theory•Product testing (how can we know that the product will notfail?)•Education Technology•Psychology•Artificial intelligence•Philosophy•Cognitive science•Linguistics•Cultural anthropology (do different cultures have different systems of knowledge?)•Logic•History and archaeology•Literature•Intelligence (information) gathering•Theology and apologetics•Knowledge management•Sociology•Mathematics and science•Testimony•Medicine (diagnosis of disease)•Neurology•Behavioral neuroscience

Epistemology234

Sources

Footnotes

[1]Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.[2]Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volume 3, 1967, Macmillan, Inc.[3]Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, 2007[4]It is sometimes suggested that these distinctions are recognized linguistically in some languages, even if not in modern Standard English(N.B. some languages related to English have been said to retain these verbs, e.g. Scots: "wit" and "ken"). In French, Portuguese and Spanish,

to know (a person)

is translated using

connaître,

conhecer,

and

conocer,

respectively, whereas

to know (how to do something)

is translatedusing

savoir

,

saber

, and

saber

. Modern Greek has the verbs

γνωρίζω

(gnorízo) and

ξέρω

(kséro). Italian has the verbs

conoscere

and

sapere

and the nouns for

knowledge

are

conoscenza

and

sapienza.

German has the verbs

kennen

and

wissen.

Wissen

implies knowing a fact,

kennen

implies knowing in the sense of being acquainted with and having a working knowledge of; there is also a noun derived from

kennen,

namely

erkennen,

which has been said to imply knowledge in the form of recognition or acknowledgment. The verb itself implies a process: you haveto go from one state to another, from a state of "not-

erkennen

" to a state of true

erkennen.

This verb seems to be the most appropriate in termsof describing the "episteme" in one of the modern European languages, hence the German name "Erkenntnistheorie." The theoreticalinterpretation and significance of these linguistic issues remain controversial.[5]Gettier, Edmund (1963). "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?".

Analysis

23

(6): 121

–

23. doi:10.2307/3326922. JSTOR 3326922.[6]http://www.

centenary.

edu/attachments/philosophy/aizawa/courses/epistemologyf2008/kirkham1984.

pdf [7]Bimal Krishna Matilal (1986).

Perception: An essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge

. Oxford India 2002. ISBN 0198246250.TheGettier problem is dealt with in Chapter 4,

Knowledge as a mental episode

. The thread continues in the next chapter

Knowing that one knows

.It is also discussed in Matilal's

Word and the World

p. 71-72.[8]Goldman, Alan H. (December 1976). "Appearing as Irreducible in Perception".

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

(InternationalPhenomenological Society)

37

(2): 147

–

164. doi:10.2307/2107188. JSTOR 2107188.[9]Robert Nozick (1981).

Philosophical Explanations

. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674664485.Philosophical Explanations Chapter 3"Knowledge and Skepticism" I. Knowledge

Conditions for Knowledge

p. 172-178.[10]D. M. Armstrong (1973).

Belief, Truth and Knowledge

. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521097371.[11]Descartes, Rene (1985).

The Philosophical Writings of Rene Descartes Vol. I

. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521288071.[12]Descartes, Rene (1985).

Philosophical Writings of Rene Descartes Vol. II

. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521288088.[13]Descartes, Rene (1985).

The Philosophical Writings of Rene Descartes

. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521288088.[14]Raskin, J. D. (2002). Constructivism in psychology: Personal construct psychology, radical constructivism, and social constructivism. In J.D. Raskin & S. K. Bridges (Eds.),

Studies in meaning: Exploring constructivist psychology

(pp. 1-25). New York , NY: Pace University Press.p. 4[15]Castelló M., & Botella,L. (2006). Constructivism and educational psychology. In J. L. Kincheloe & R. A. Horn (Eds.),

The Praeger handbook of education and psychology

(Vol. 2, pp. 263-270). Westport, CT: Praeger. p. 263[16]Jonassen, D. H. (1991). Objectivism versus constructivism, Do we need a new philosophical paradigm?

Educational technology researchand development

,

39

(3), 5-14. p. 10[17]John L. Pollock (1975).

Knowledge and Justification

. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. ISBN 0691072035. p. 26.[18]Foundational Theories of Epistemic Justification (http://plato.stanford.

edu/entries/justep-foundational) entry in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

[19]Susan Haack (1993).

Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology

. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 063119679X.[20]Knorr-Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p.1.

Bibliography

•The London Philosophy Study Guide (http://www.ucl.

ac.

uk/philosophy/LPSG/) offers many suggestions onwhat to read, depending on the student's familiarity with the subject: Epistemology & Methodology (http://www.ucl.

ac.

uk/philosophy/LPSG/Ep&Meth.

htm)•Annis, David (1978). "A Contextualist Theory of Epistemic Justification".

American Philosophical Quarterly

15

:213

–

219.•Ayer, Alfred Jules. 1936.

Language, Truth, and Logic

.•BonJour, Laurence. 2002.

Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses

. Lanham, MD:Rowman & Littlefield.•Boufoy-Bastick, Z. (2005). "Introducing 'Applicable Knowledge' as a Challenge to the Attainment of AbsoluteKnowledge".

Sophia Journal of Philosophy

8

: 39

–

51.•Bovens, Luc & Hartmann, Stephan. 2003.

Bayesian Epistemology

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Epistemology235•Butchvarov, Panayot. 1970.

The Concept of Knowledge

. Evanston, Northwestern University Press.•Cohen, Stewart (1998). "Contextualist Solutions to Epistemological Problems: Skepticism, Gettier, and theLottery".

Australasian Journal of Philosophy

76

(2): 289

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306. doi:10.1080/00048409812348411.•Cohen, Stewart. 1999. "Contextualism, Skepticism, and Reasons", in Tomberlin 1999.•Dancy, Jonathan. 1991.

An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology

(Second Edition). John Wiley & Sons.ISBN 0-631-13622-3•DeRose, Keith (1992). "Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions".

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

15

: 213

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19.•DeRose, Keith. 1999. "Contextualism: An Explanation and Defense", in Greco and Sosa 1999.•Descartes, Rene. 1641.

Meditations on First Philosophy

•Feldman, Richard. 1999. "Contextualism and Skepticism", in Tomberlin 1999, pp. 91

–

114.•Gettier, Edmund. 1963. "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?",

Analysis

, Vol. 23, pp. 121

–

23. Online text (http:// www.

ditext.

com/gettier/gettier.html).•Greco, J. & Sosa, E. 1999.

Blackwell Guide to Epistemology

, Blackwell Publishing.•Harris, Errol E. 1970.

Hypothesis And Perception

, George Allen and Unwin, London, Reprinted 2002 Routledge,London.•Harwood, Sterling (1989). "Taking Skepticism Seriously

–

And In Context".

Philosophical Investigations

12

(3):223

–

233. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9205.1989.tb00275.x.•Hay, Clare. 2008.

The Theory of Knowledge: A Coursebook

, The Lutterworth Press, Cambridge. ISBN978-0718830885•Hawthorne, John. 2005. "The Case for Closure",

Contemporary Debates in Epistemology

, Peter Sosa andMatthias Steup (ed.): 26

–

43.•Hendricks, Vincent F. 2006.

Mainstream and Formal Epistemology

, New York: Cambridge University Press.•Kant, Immanuel. 1781.

Critique of Pure Reason

.•Keeton, Morris T. 1962. "Empiricism", in

Dictionary of Philosophy

, Dagobert D. Runes (ed.), Littlefield, Adams,and Company, Totowa, NJ, pp. 89

–

90.•Kierkegaard, Søren. 1844.

Philosophical Fragments

.•Kirkham, Richard. 1984. "Does the Gettier Problem Rest on a Mistake?"

Mind

, 93.•Klein, Peter. 1981.

Certainty: a Refutation of Skepticism

, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.•Kyburg, H.E. 1961.

Probability and the Logic of Rational Belief

, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.•Korzybski, Alfred. 1994 (1933).

Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and GeneralSemantics

, Fifth Edition. Ft. Worth, TX: Institute of General Semantics.•Lewis, David (1996). "Elusive Knowledge".

Australian Journal of Philosophy

74

(4): 549

–

67.doi:10.1080/00048409612347521.•Morin, Edgar. 1986.

La Méthode, Tome 3, La Connaissance de la connaissance

(Method, 3rd volume : Theknowledge of knowledge)•Morton, Adam. 2002.

A Guide Through the Theory of Knowledge

(Third Edition) Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.ISBN 1-4051-0012-5•Nelson, Quee. 2007.

The Slightest Philosophy

, Indianapolis, IN: Dog Ear Publishing, 296 pages.•Niiniluoto, Ilkka. 2002.

Critical Scientific Realism

, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.•Plato.

Meno

.•Popper, Karl R. 1972.

Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach

, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.•Preyer, G./Siebelt, F./Ulfig, A. 1994.

Language, Mind and Epistemology

, Dordrecht: Kluwer AcademicPublishers.•Rand, Ayn. 1979.

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

, New York: Meridian.•Russell, Bertrand. 1912.

The Problems of Philosophy

, New York: Oxford University Press.•Russell, Bertrand. 1940.

An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth

, Nottingham: Spokesman Books.

Epistemology236•Santayana, George. 1923.

Scepticism and Animal Faith

, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons

–

London: Constableand Co.•Spir, African. 1877.

Denken und Wirklichkeit: Versuch einer Erneuerung der kritischen Philosophie

(Thoughtand Reality: Attempt at a Renewal of Critical Philosophy), (Second Edition) Leipzig: J. G. Findel.•Schiffer, Stephen (1996). "Contextualist Solutions to Skepticism".

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society

96

:317

–

33.•Steup, Matthias. 2005. "Knowledge and Skepticism",

Contemporary Debates in Epistemology

, Peter Sosa andMatthias Steup (eds.): 1

–

13.•Tomberlin, James (ed.). 1999.

Philosophical Perspectives 13, Epistemology

, Blackwell Publishing.•Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1922.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

, C.K. Ogden (trns.), Dover. Online text (http:// www.

kfs.

org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.

html).

External links and references

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

articles:

•Bayesian Epistemology (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/epistemology-bayesian/) by William Talbott.•Epistemology (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/epistemology/) by Matthias Steup.•Evolutionary Epistemology (http://plato.stanford.

edu/entries/epistemology-evolutionary/) by Michael Bradie& William Harms.•Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (http://plato.stanford.

edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/)by Elizabeth Anderson.•Naturalized Epistemology (http://plato.

stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-naturalized/) by Richard Feldman.•Social Epistemology (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/epistemology-social/) by Alvin Goldman.•Virtue Epistemology (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/epistemology-virtue/) by John Greco.

Further reading

•Armstrong, D.M. (1968).

A Materialistic Theory of the Mind

. London: RKP.•Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A., & Frith, U. (1985). Does the Autistic Child Have a "Theory of Mind"?

Cognition

21,37-46•Block, Ned. (1980a). "Introduction: What Is Functionalism?" in

Readings in Philosophy of Psychology

.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.•Block, Ned. (1980b). "Troubles With Functionalism", in Block (1980a).•Block, Ned. (1994). Qualia. In S. Guttenplan (ed),

A Companion to Philosophy of Mind

. Oxford: Blackwell•Block, Ned. (1996). "What is functionalism?" a revised version of the entry on functionalism in

The Encyclopediaof Philosophy Supplement

, Macmillan. ( PDF online (http://www.

nyu.

edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/ papers/functionalism.

pdf))•Block, Ned and Fodor, J. (1972). "What Psychological States Are Not".

Philosophical Review

81.•Chalmers, David. (1996).

The Conscious Mind

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.•Crabb, B.G. (2005). "Fading and Dancing Qualia - Moving and Shaking Arguments", Deunant Books.

Functionalism245•DeLancey, C. (2002). "Passionate Engines - What Emotions Reveal about the Mind and Artificial Intelligence."Oxford: Oxford University Press.•Dennett, D. (1990) Quining Qualia. In W. Lycan, (ed),

Mind and Cognition

. Oxford: Blackwells•Levin, Janet. (2004). "Functionalism",

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(Fall 2004 Edition), E. Zalta(ed.). ( online (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/functionalism/))•Lewis, David. (1966). "An Argument for the Identity Theory".

Journal of Philosophy

63.•Lewis, David. (1980). "Mad Pain and Martian Pain". In Block (1980a) Vol. 1, pp. 216

–

222.•Lycan, W. (1987)

Consciousness

. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.•Mandik, Pete. (1998).

Fine-grained Supervience, Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Future of Functionalism

.•Marr, D. (1982).

Vision: A Computational Approach

. San Francisco: Freeman & Co.•Putnam, Hilary. (1960). "Minds and Machines". Reprinted in Putnam (1975a).•Putnam, Hilary. (1967). "Psychological Predicates". In

Art, Mind, and Religion

, W.H. Capitan and D.D. Merrill(eds.), pp. 37

–

48. (Later published as "The Nature of Mental States" in Putnam (1975a).•Putnam, Hilary. (1975a).

Mind, Language, and Reality

. Cambridge: CUP.•Putnam, Hilary. (1975b). "The Meaning of 'Meaning'", reprinted in Putnam (1975a).( PDF online (http:// internalism.

googlegroups.

com/web/Putnam - The meaning of 'meaning'.pdf?gda=twdJY1oAAABFSTngQf24Sy1RD7yNn1iVgy3Odg0ZctAT1N_Bh2qhdGG1qiJ7UbTIup-M2XPURDQe1sJTwbuelxnp•Searle, John. (1980). "Minds, Brains and Programs",

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

, vol.3. ( online (http://www.bbsonline.

org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.

searle2.html))•Smart, J.J.C. (1959). "Sensations and Brain Processes".

Philosophical Review

LXVIII.

External links

•Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/functionalism/)•Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind (http://philosophy.uwaterloo.

ca/MindDict/functionalism.

html)•The Functioning Theory of Consciousness (http://www.excaliburbooks.

com/Articles/Papers/consciousness.html)•Intelligent.Plastic.Machines (http://www.youtube.

com/watch?v=4omEjz9rGwI)

Hard problem of consciousness246

Hard problem of consciousness

The

hard problem of consciousness

is the problem of explaining how and why we have qualitative phenomenalexperiences.

[1]

David Chalmers

[2]

contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate,integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, etc. Easy problems are easy because all that is requiredfor their solution is to specify a mechanism that can perform the function. That is, their proposed solutions,regardless of how complex or poorly understood they may be, can be entirely consistent with the modernmaterialistic conception of natural phenomena. Chalmers claims that the problem of experience is distinct from thisset, and he argues that the problem of experience will "persist even when the performance of all the relevantfunctions is explained".

[3]

The existence of a "hard problem" is controversial and has been disputed by some philosophers . Providing ananswer to this question could lie in understanding the roles that physical processes play in creating consciousnessand the extent to which these processes create our subjective qualities of experience.

[4]

Several questions about consciousness must be resolved in order to acquire a full understanding of it. Thesequestions include, but are not limited to, whether being conscious could be wholly described in physical terms, suchas the aggregation of neural processes in the brain. It follows that if consciousness cannot be explained exclusivelyby physical events in the brain, it must transcend the capabilities of physical systems and require an explanation of nonphysical means. For philosophers who assert that consciousness is nonphysical in nature, there remains aquestion about what outside of physical theory is required to explain consciousness.

Formulation of the problem

Various formulations of the "hard problem":•"Why should physical processing give rise to any inner life at all?"•"How is it that some organisms are subjects of experience?"•"Why does awareness of sensory information exist at all?"•"Why do qualia exist?"•"Why is there a subjective component to experience?"•"Why aren't we philosophical zombies?"Chalmers stated the problem as "why does the

feeling

which accompanies awareness of sensory information exist atall?" in both

The Conscious Mind

(1996) and in the paper "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" (

The Journal of Consciousness Studies

, 1995).James Trefil notes that "it is the only major question in the sciences that we don't even know how to ask."

[5]

History

The hard problem has scholarly antecedents considerably earlier than Chalmers.Gottfried Leibniz wrote:Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable onmechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and motions. And supposing there were amachine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size,while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should,on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which toexplain a perception.

[6]

Isaac Newton wrote in a letter to Henry Oldenburg:

Hard problem of consciousness247to determine by what modes or actions light produceth in our minds the phantasm of colour is not soeasie.

[7]

T.H. Huxley remarked:how it is that any thing so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as the result of irritatingnervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.

[8]

Responses

Scientific attempts

There have been scientific attempts to explain subjective aspects of consciousness, which is related to the bindingproblem in neuroscience. Many eminent theorists, including Francis Crick and Roger Penrose, have worked in thisfield. Nevertheless, even as sophisticated accounts are given, it is unclear if such theories address the hard problem.Eliminative materialist philosopher Patricia Smith Churchland has famously remarked about Penrose's theories that"Pixie dust in the synapses is about as explanatorily powerful as quantum coherence in the microtubules."

[9]

Consciousness is fundamental or elusive

Some philosophers, including Chalmers himself, argue that consciousness is a fundamental constituent of theuniverse, a form of panpsychism sometimes referred to as Hylopathism. In the paper "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness,

”

Chalmers wrote:It is undeniable that some organismsare subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that thesesystems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage invisual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deepblue, the sensation of middle C?... It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, butwe have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to arich inner life at all?

[10]

Chalmers argues that a

‘

rich inner life

’

is not logically reducible to the functional properties of physical processes. Hestates that consciousness must be described using nonphysical means. This description involves a fundamentalingredient capable of clarifying phenomena that have not been explained using physical means. Use of thisfundamental property, Chalmers argues, is necessary to explain certain functions of the world, much like otherfundamental features, such as mass and time, explain significant principles in nature.Thomas Nagel has posited that we can, in principle, never have an objective account of consciousness.New mysterianism, such as that of Colin McGinn, proposes that the human mind, in its current form, will not be ableto explain consciousness.

Deflationary accounts

Some philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett,

[11]

oppose the idea that there is a hard problem. These theorists arguethat once we really come to understand what consciousness is, we will realize that the hard problem is unreal. Forinstance, Dennett asserts that the so-called hard problem willbe solved in the process of answering the easy ones.

[12]

In contrast with Chalmers, he argues that consciousness is not a fundamental feature of the universe and instead willeventually be fully explained by natural phenomena. Instead of involving the nonphysical, he says, consciousnessmerely plays tricks on people so that it appears nonphysical

—

in other words, it simply seems like it requiresnonphysical features to account for its powers. In this way, Dennett compares consciousness to magic and itscapability to create extraordinary illusions out of ordinary things.

[13]

To show how people might be commonly fooled into overstating the powers of consciousness, Dennett describes anormal phenomenon called change blindness, a visual process that involves failure to detect scenery changes in a

Hard problem of consciousness248series of alternating images.

[14]

He uses this concept to argue that the overestimation of the brain

’

s visual processingimplies that the conception of our consciousness is likely not as pervasive as we make it out to be. He claims that thiserror of making consciousness more mysterious than it is could be a misstep in any developments toward aneffective explanatory theory. Critics such as Galen Strawson reply that, in the case of consciousness, even a mistakenexperience retains the essential face of experience that needs to be explained, contra Dennett.To address the question of the hard problem, or how and why physical processes give rise to experience, Dennettstates that the phenomenon of having experience is nothing more than the performance of functions or the productionof behavior, which can also be referred to as the easy problems of consciousness.

[15]

He states that consciousnessitself is driven simply by these functions, and to strip them away would wipe out any ability to identify thoughts,feelings, and consciousness altogether. So, unlike Chalmers and other dualists, Dennett says that the easy problemsand the hard problem cannot be separated from each other. To him, the hard problem of experience is includedamong

—

not separate from

—

the easy problems, and therefore they can only be explained together as a cohesiveunit.

[16]

A notable deflationary account is the Higher-Order Thought theories of consciousness.

[17]

[18]

Though the mostcommon arguments against deflationary accounts and eliminative materialism is the argument from qualia, and thatconscious experiences are irreducible to physical states - or that current popular definitions of "physical" areincomplete - the objection follows that the one and same reality can appear in different ways, and that the numericaldifference of these ways is consistent with a unitary mode of existence of the reality. Critics of the deflationaryapproach object that qualia are a case where a single reality cannot have multiple appearances. As John Searle pointsout: "where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the appearance is the reality."

[19]

Critics of Dennett's approach, such as David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel, argue that Dennett's argument misses thepoint of the inquiry by merely re-defining consciousness as an external property and ignoring the subjective aspectcompletely. This has led detractors to refer to Dennett's book

Consciousness Explained

as

Consciousness Ignored

or

Consciousness Explained Away

.

[20]

[21]

Dennett discussed this at the end of his book with a section entitled

Consciousness Explained or Explained Away?

[22]

References

[1]Harnad, Stevan (1995) " Why and How We Are Not Zombies (http://cogprints.

org/1601/6/harnad95.

zombies.

html).

Journal of Consciousness Studies

1:164-167[2]

The Place of Mind,

ed. Brian Cooney[3]"Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" (http://www.

imprint.co.uk/chalmers.

html), David Chalmers,

Journal of ConsciousnessStudies

2 (3), 1995, pp. 200

–

219.[4]"Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness", David Chalmers,

Journal of Consciousness Studies

2 (3), 1995, pp. 200

–

219.[5]Trefil, James S. (1997).

One hundred and one things you don't know about science and no one else does either

. Mariner Books. p. 15.ISBN 0395877407.[6]Leibniz,

Monadology,

17, quoted by Istvan Aranyosi (http://www.personal.

ceu.hu/students/03/Istvan_Aranyosi/Chapter IV.

pdf)[7]Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Panpsychism (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/panpsychism/)[8]

The Elements of Physiology and Hygiene: A Text-book for Educational Institutions,

by T.H. Huxley & W.J. Youmans. Appleton & Co., 1868p. 178 (http://books.

google.

com/books?id=aVUAAAAAYAAJ)[9]Churchland, Patricia Smith (2002).

Brain-wise: studies in neurophilosophy

. MIT Press. p. 197. ISBN 026253200X.[10]"Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" (http://www.

imprint.co.uk/chalmers.

html), David Chalmers,

Journal of ConsciousnessStudies

2 (3), 1995, pp. 200

–

219.[11]Dennett, Daniel. "Commentary on Chalmers: Facing Backwards on the Problem of Consciousness" (http://ase.

tufts.

edu/cogstud/papers/ chalmers.

htm)[12]Dennett, Daniel. "Commentary on Chalmers: Facing Backwards on the Problem of Consciousness."[13]Dennett, Daniel (2003). Explaining the "Magic" of Consciousness. Journal of Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology, 1(1), pp. 7-19.[14]Dennett, Daniel (1991). Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown[15]Dennett, Daniel. "Commentary on Chalmers: Facing Backwards on the Problem of Consciousness."[16]Dennett, Daniel (2003). Explaining the "Magic" of Consciousness. Journal of Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology, 1(1), pp. 7-19.[17]The HOT theory and Antitheories (http://teachingcompany.

12.

forumer.

com/a/23-the-hot-theory-and-antitheories_post3060.

html)

Hard problem of consciousness249

[18]Carruthers, Peter. "Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness" (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/consciousness-higher/).

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

. .[19]Searle, J.

The Mystery of Consciousness

, p111[20]Barash 2003[21]Carruthers 2005, p. 32[22]Dennett, Daniel (1991). Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown

External links

•

Journal of Consciousness Studies

Symposium on the Hard Problem (http://consc.

net/responses.

html#jcs)•

Online papers on the hard and easy problem of consciousness

(http://consc.

net/online/1.

2d)•

Online papers on Higher-Order Thought approaches to the hard problem of consciousness

(http://consc.net/ online/1.

4a)•

The Objective Consciousness Revisited - Understanding the Nature of Consciousness

(http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.

php?option=com_content&task=view&id=532&Itemid=40) by Robert G. Heyward•

The Hard Problem Is Dead

(http://users.sfo.

com/~mcmf/hardproblem.

html) by Teed Rockwell•

You can't argue with a Zombie

(http://www.

davidchess.

com/words/poc/lanier_zombie.

html) by Jaron Lanier•Looking to systems theory for a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience and evolutionary foundationsfor higher order thought (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.

pharoah/) Pharoah, M.C. (online). RetrievedJan.03 2008.•

The Hard Problem of Consciousness and Two Arguments for Interactionism

(http://hardproblem.ru/wp-content/ uploads/2010/06/Vasilyev-Hard-Problem.

pdf) by Vadim Vasilyev•

Correlation vs. Causality: How/Why the Mind/Body Problem Is Hard

(http://cogprints.

org/1617/) by StevanHarnad

Heideggerian terminology

Martin Heidegger, the 20th-century German philosopher, introduced to the world a large body of work whichintended a profound change of direction for philosophy. Such was the depth of change that he found himself needingto introduce a number of neologisms and adapted vocabulary, often connected to idiomatic words and phrases in theGerman language.Two of his most basic neologisms,

present-at-hand

and

ready-to-hand

, are used to describe various attitudestoward things in the world. For Heidegger, such "attitudes" are prior to, i.e. more basic than, the various sciences of the individual items in the world. Science itself is an attitude, one that attempts a kind of neutral investigation. Otherrelated terms are also explained below.Heidegger's overall analysis is quite involved, taking in a lot of the history of philosophy. See

Being and Time

for adescription of his overall project, and to give some context to these technical terms.

[1]

[2]

Terms

Aletheia

(Ancient Greek: ἀλήθεια)

Heidegger's idea of

aletheia

, or disclosure, was an attempt to make sense of how things in the world appear to humanbeings as part of an opening in intelligibility, as "unclosedness" or "unconcealedness". It is closely related to thenotion of world disclosure, the way in which things get their sense as part of a holistically structured, pre-interpretedbackground of meaning. Initially, Heidegger wanted

aletheia

to stand for a re-interpreted definition of truth.However, he later corrected the association of

aletheia

with truth. See main article on

aletheia

for more information.

Heideggerian terminology250

Being-in-the-World

(German: In-der-Welt-sein)

Being-in-the-world is Heidegger's replacement for terms such as subject, object, consciousness, and world. For him,the split of things into subject/object, as we find in the Western tradition and even in our language, must beovercome, as is indicated by the root structure of Husserl and Brentano's concept of intentionality, i.e., that allconsciousness is consciousness of something, that there is no consciousness, as such, cut off from an object (be it thematter of a thought, or of a perception). Nor are there objects without some consciousness beholding or beinginvolved with them.At the most basic level of

being-in-the-world,

Heidegger notes that there is always a mood, a mood that "assails us"in our unreflecting devotion to the world. A mood comes neither from the "outside" nor from the "inside," but arisesfrom being-in-the-world. One may turn away from a mood, but that is only to another mood; it is part of ourfacticity. Only with a mood are we permitted to encounter things in the world. Dasein (a co-term forbeing-in-the-world) has an openness to the world that is constituted by the attunement of a mood or state of mind. Assuch, Dasein is a "thrown" "projection," projecting itself onto the possibilities that lie before it or may be hidden, andinterpreting and understanding the world in terms of possibilities. Such projecting has nothing to do with comportingoneself toward a plan that has been thought out. It is not a plan, since Dasein has, as Dasein, already projected itself.Dasein always understands itself in terms of possibilities. As projecting, the understanding of Dasein is itspossibilities

as

possibilities. One can take up the possibilities of "The They" self and merely follow along or makesome more authentic understanding. (See Hubert Dreyfus' book -"Being-in-the-World")

Being-toward-death

(German: Sein-zum-Tode)

Being-toward-death is

not

an orientation that brings Dasein closer to its end, in terms of clinical death, but is rather

away of being

.

[3]

Heideggerian terminology refers to a process of growing through the world where a certainforesight guides the Dasein towards gaining an authentic perspective. It is provided by dread or death. In the analysisof time, it is revealed as a threefold condition of Being. Time, the present and the notion of the "eternal", are modesof temporality. Temporality is the way we see time. For Heidegger, it is very different from the mistaken view of time as being a linear series of past, present and future. Instead he sees it as being an ecstasy, an outside-of-itself, of futural projections (possibilities) and one's place in history as a part of one's generation. Possibilities, then, areintegral to our understanding of time; our projects, or thrown projection in-the-world, are what absorb and direct us.Futurity, as a direction toward the future that always contains the past

—

the has-been

—

is a primary mode of Dasein'stemporality.Death is that possibility which is the absolute impossibility of Dasein. As such, it cannot be compared to any otherkind of ending or "running out" of something. For example, one's death is not an empirical event. For Heidegger,death is Dasein's ownmost (it is what makes Dasein individual), it is non-relational (nobody can take one's deathaway from one, or die in one's place, and we can not understand our own death through the death of other Dasein),and it is not to be outstripped. The "not-yet" of life is always already a part of Dasein: "as soon as man comes to life,he is at once old enough to die." The threefold condition of death is thus simultaneously one's

"ownmost potentiality-for-being, non-relational, and not to be out-stripped"

. Death is determinate in its inevitability, but anauthentic Being-toward-death understands the indeterminate nature of one's own inevitable death - one never knowswhen or how it is going to come. However, this indeterminacy does not put death in some distant, futural "not-yet";authentic Being-toward-death understands one's individual death as always already a part of one.

[4]

With average, everyday (normal) discussion of death, all this is concealed. The "they-self" talks about it in a fugitivemanner, passes it off as something that occurs at some time but is not yet "present-at-hand" as an

actuality

, and hidesits character as one's ownmost possibility, presenting it as belonging to no one in particular. It becomes devalued -redefined as a neutral and mundane aspect of existence that merits no authentic consideration. "One dies" is

Heideggerian terminology251interpreted as a fact, and comes to mean "nobody dies".

[5]

On the other hand, authenticity takes Dasein out of the "They," in part by revealing its place as a part of the They.Heidegger states that

Authentic being-toward-death

calls Dasein's individual self out of its "they-self", and frees it tore-evaluate life from the standpoint of finitude. In so doing, Dasein opens itself up for "angst," translated alternatelyas "dread" or as "anxiety." Angst, as opposed to fear, does not have any distinct object for its dread; it is ratheranxious in the face of Being-in-the-world in general - that is, it is anxious in the face of Dasein's own self. Angst is ashocking individuation of Dasein, when it realizes that it is not at home in the world, or when it comes face to facewith its own "uncanny" (German Unheimlich: "not at home"). In Dasein's individuation, it is open to hearing the"call of conscience," which comes from Dasein's own Self when it wants to be its Self. This Self is then open totruth, understood as unconcealment (Greek Aletheia). In this moment of vision, Dasein understands what is hiddenas well as hiddenness itself, indicating Heidegger's regular uniting of opposites; in this case, truth and untruth.

[6]

Being-with

(German: Mitsein)

Both modes of "present-at-hand" and "ready-to-hand," are distinguished from how other things are primarilyencountered. While all entities (non-Dasein, other Daseins, and itself) are encountered in these modes, the mode of "being-with" and all the emotion, loneliness and togetherness that it implies, is a unifying mode of being for Daseinand its world.Being-with is a nuanced concept for Heidegger, made especially difficult for readers because of his writing style andthe challenge of translating his works into English. However, in describing the Dasein's fundamental mode of being-in-the-world as Care

(German: Sorge)

, for example "Dasein cares about its own Being", it could be said thatbeing-with is a fundamental way of understanding Dasein's character as a being that is

interested in its world

; it isnot a secondary role, but a descriptive characteristic.

Destruktion

Here is Martin Heidegger on philosophy as the task of destroying ontological concepts, in other words alsoincluding, ordinary everyday meanings of words like time, history, being, theory, death, mind, body, matter, logicetc.:When tradition thus becomes master, it does so in such a way that what it 'transmits' is made so inaccessible,proximally and for the most part, that it rather becomes concealed. Tradition takes what has come down to usand delivers it over to self-evidence; it blocks our access to those primordial 'sources' from which thecategories and concepts handed down to us have been in part quite genuinely drawn. Indeed it makes us forgetthat they have had such an origin, and makes us suppose that the necessity of going back to these sources issomething which we need not even understand. (

Being and Time

, p. 43)Heidegger considers that tradition can become calcified here and there:If the question of Being is to have its own history made transparent, then this hardened tradition must beloosened up, and the concealments which it has brought about dissolved. We understand this task as one inwhich by taking the question of Being as our clue we are to destroy the traditional content of ancient ontologyuntil we arrive at those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the natureof Being---the ways which have guided us ever since. (

Being and Time

, p. 44)Heidegger then remarks on the positivity of his project of

destruktion

:it has nothing to do with a vicious relativizing of ontological standpoints. But this destruction is just as farfrom having the negative sense of shaking off the ontological tradition. We must, on the contrary, stake out thepositive possibilities of that tradition, and this means keeping it within its limits; and these in turn are givenfactically in the way the question is formulated at the time, and in the way the possible field for investigation is

Heideggerian terminology252thus bounded off. On its negative side, this destruction does not relate itself toward the past; its criticism isaimed at 'today' and at the prevalent way of treating the history of ontology. .. But to bury the past in nullity(Nichtigkeit) is not the purpose of this destruction; its aim is positive; its negative function remainsunexpressed and indirect. (

Being and Time

, p. 44)

Dasein

is a German word and is sometimes translated as "being-there" or "being-here" (

da

combines in its meaning"here" and "there", excluding the spatial-relational distinction made by the English words;

Sein

is the infinitive, "tobe"). Mostly it is not translatable at all. Heidegger, after Nietzsche, used the word, but as a synonym for "humanbeing" or "human entity" (see main article on Dasein). A Dasein is then a new coinage for a human being that isthere,

in a familiar world

, and in a mood. Dasein also has unique capacities for language, intersubjectivecommunication, and detached reasoning. Furthermore, average humans have an understanding of being insofar asthey understand

what

things are and

that

they are e.g. "My dog is brown" or "Today is Sunday." Heidegger believedthat this pre-reflective understanding of being, that which determines entities

as

entities,

[7]

helps constitute ourunique existence as human beings, thus the coinage of "Dasein."

Disclosure, or "world disclosure"

Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa write that: "According to Heidegger our nature is to be world disclosers. Thatis, by means of our equipment and coordinated practices we human beings open coherent, distinct contexts or worldsin which we perceive, feel, act, and think."

[8]

Heidegger scholar Nikolas Kompridis writes: "World disclosure refers, with deliberate ambiguity, to a process whichactually occurs at two different levels. At one level, it refers to the disclosure of an already interpreted, symbolicallystructured world; the world, that is, within which we always already find ourselves. At another level, it refers asmuch to the disclosure of new horizons of meaning as to the disclosure of previously hidden or unthematizeddimensions of meaning."

[9]

Further information: Reflective disclosure

Equipment

(German: das Zeug)

An object in the world with which we have meaningful dealings with.A nearly un-translatable term, Heidegger's equipment can be thought of as a collective noun, so that it is neverappropriate to call something 'an equipment'. Instead, its use often reflects it to mean a tool, or as an "in-order-to" forDasein. Tools, in this collective sense, and in being

ready-to-hand

, always exist in a network of other tools andorganizations, e.g., the paper is on a desk in a room at a university. It is inappropriate usually to see such equipmenton its own or as something

present-at-hand

Heideggerian terminology253

Existence

Simply put, Heidegger uses this word only to denote the noun - that something

is

.Two related words,

existenziell

and

Existential

, are used as descriptive characteristics of Being. To be

existenziell

isa categorical or ontic characteristic: an understanding of all this which relates to one's existence, while an

Existenzial

is an ontological characteristic: the structure of existence.

Gelassenheit

Often translated as "releasment," Heidegger has described

gelassenheit

as "the spirit of disponibilité [availability]before What-Is which permits us simply to let things be in whatever may be their uncertainty and their mystery."Heidegger borrowed the term from the Christian mystical tradition, proximately from Meister Eckhart.

[10]

Geworfenheit

"Being thrown" (

Geworfen

) into the world.

Geworfen

denotes the arbitrary or inscrutable nature of

Dasein

thatconnects the past with the present. The past, through Being-toward-Death, becomes a part of

Dasein.

Awareness andacknowledgment of the arbitrariness of

Dasein

is characterized as a state of "thrown-ness" (

Geworfenheit

) in thepresent, i.e., being thrown into the world with all its attendant frustrations, sufferings, and demands that one does notchoose, such as social conventions or ties of kinship and duty. The very fact of one's own existence is amanifestation of thrown-ness. The idea of the past as a matrix not chosen, but at the same time not utterly binding ordeterministic, results in the notion of

Geworfenheit

-- a kind of alienation that human beings struggle against, andthat leaves a paradoxical opening for freedom:[T]he thrower of the PROJECT is THROWN in his own throw. How can we account for this freedom? Wecannot. It is simply a fact, not caused or grounded, but the condition of all causation and grounding.

[11]

Ontic

Heidegger uses the term

ontic,

often in contrast to the term

ontological

, when he gives descriptive characteristics of a particular thing and the "plain facts" of its existence. For example, the objects that are studied by physics orchemistry are

ontic

, they are certain given things in the world that are studied without necessarily raising moregeneral ontological questions.

Ontological

(German: ontologisch)

As opposed to "ontic",

ontological

is used when the nature, or meaningful structure of existence is at issue.

Ontology

, a discipline of metaphysics, focuses on the formal study of Being. Thus, something that is ontological isconcerned with understanding and investigating Being, the ground of Being, or the concept of Being itself.

Present-at-Hand

(German: vorhanden, presence-at-hand: Vorhandenheit)

With the

present-at-hand

one has (in contrast to

“

ready-to-hand

”

) an attitude like that of a scientist or theorist, of merely looking at or observing something. In seeing an entity as present-at-hand, the beholder is concerned only withthe bare facts of a thing or a concept, as they are present and in order to

theorize

about it. This way of seeing isdisinterested in the concern it may hold for Dasein, its history or usefulness. This attitude is often described asexisting in neutral space without any particular mood or subjectivity. However, for Heidegger, it is not completelydisinterested or neutral. It has a mood, and is part of the metaphysics of presence that tends to level all things down.Through his writings, Heidegger sets out to accomplish the

destruktion

(see above) of this metaphysics of presence.

Heideggerian terminology254

Presence-at-hand

is not the way things in the world are usually encountered, and it is only revealed as a deficient orsecondary mode, e.g., when a hammer breaks it loses its usefulness and appears as merely there, present-at-hand.When a thing is revealed as present-at-hand, it stands apart from any useful set of equipment but soon loses thismode of being present-at-hand and becomes something, for example, that which must be repaired or replaced.

Ready-to-Hand

(German: griffbereit, zuhanden, readiness-to-hand, handiness: Zuhandenheit)

However, in almost all cases we are involved in the world in an ordinary, and more involved, way. We are usuallydoing things with a view to achieving something. Take for example, a hammer: it is ready-to-hand; we use it withouttheorizing. In fact, if we were to look at it as present-at-hand, we might easily make a mistake. Only when it breaksor something goes wrong might we see the hammer as present-at-hand, just lying there. Even then however, it maybe not fully present-at-hand, as it is now showing itself as something to be repaired or disposed, and therefore a partof the totality of our involvements. In this case its Being may be seen as unreadiness-to-hand. Heidegger outlinesthree manners of unreadiness-to-hand: Conspicuous (damaged, e.g. lamps wiring has broken), Obtrusive (a part ismissing which is required for the entity to function e.g. we find the bulb is missing), Obstinate (when the entity is ahindrance to us in pursuing a project, e.g. the lamp blocks my view of the computer screen).Importantly, the present-at-hand only emerges from the prior attitude in which we care about what is going on andwe see the hammer in a context or world of equipment that is handy or remote, and that is there "in order to" dosomething. In this sense the

ready-to-hand

is

primordial

compared to that of the

present-at-hand

. The termprimordial here does not imply something Primitive, but rather refers to Heidegger's idea that Being can only beunderstood through what is everyday and "close" to us. Our everyday understanding of the world is necessarilyessentially a part of any kind of scientific or theoretical studies of entities - the present-at-hand - might be. Only bystudying our "average-everyday" understanding of the world, as it is expressed in the totality of our relationships tothe ready-to-hand entities of the world, can we lay appropriate bases for specific scientific investigations intospecific entities within the world.For Heidegger in

Being and Time

this illustrates, in a very practical way, the way the present-at-hand, as a present ina "now" or a present eternally (as, for example, a scientific law or a Platonic Form), has come to dominateintellectual thought, especially since the Enlightenment. To understand the question of being one must be careful notto fall into this leveling off, or forgetfulness of being, that has come to assail Western thought since Socrates, see themetaphysics of presence.

'The One' / 'the They'

(German: Das Man, meaning They-Self)

One of the most interesting and important 'concepts' in Being and Time is that of

Das Man

, for which there is noexact English translation; different translations and commentators use different conventions. It is often translated as"the They" or "People" or "Anyone" but is more accurately translated as "One" (as in "'one' should always wearclean underwear"). Das Man derives from the impersonal singular pronoun

man

('one', as distinct from 'I', or 'you', or'he', or 'she', or 'they'). Both the German

man

and the English 'one' are neutral or indeterminate in respect of genderand, even, in a sense, of number, though both words suggest an unspecified, unspecifiable, indeterminate plurality.Heidegger refers to this concept of

the One

in explaining inauthentic modes of existence, in which Dasein, instead of truly choosing to do something, does it only because "That is what one does" or "That is what people do". Thus,

das Man

is not a proper or measurable entity, but rather an amorphous part of social reality that functions effectively inthe manner that it does through this intangibility.'Das Man' constitutes a possibility of Dasein's Being, and so das Man cannot be said to be any particular someone.Rather, the existence of 'the They' is known to us through, for example, linguistic conventions and social norms.Heidegger states that, "The "they" prescribes one's state-of-mind, and determines what and how one 'sees'".

Heideggerian terminology255To give examples: when one makes an appeal to what is commonly known, one says "one does not do such a thing";When one sits in a car or bus or reads a newspaper, one is participating in the world of 'the They'. This is a feature of 'the They' as it functions in society, an authority that has no particular source. In a non-moral sense Heideggercontrasts "the authentic self" (

my owned self

) with "the they self" ("my un-owned self").A related concept to this is that of the

Apophantic,

assertion.

Apophantic

An assertion (as opposed to a question, a doubt or a more expressive sense) is

apophantic

. It is a statement thatcovers up meaning and just gives us something as present-at-hand. For Instance, "The President is on vacation", and,"Salt is Sodium Chloride" are sentences that, because of their apophantic character, can easily be picked-up andrepeated in news and gossip by 'The They.' However, the real

ready-to-hand

meaning and context may be lost.

Care or Concern

(German: Sorge)

A fundamental basis of our being-in-the-world is for Heidegger, not matter or spirit, but care

:

Dasein's facticity is such that its Being-in-the-world has always dispersed itself or even split itself upinto definite ways of Being-in. The multiplicity of these is indicated by the following examples: havingto do with something, producing something, attending to something and looking after it, making use of something, giving something up and letting it go, undertaking, accomplishing, evincing, interrogating,considering, discussing, determining. . . .

[12]

All these ways of Being-in have concern (Fürsorge, care) as their kind of Being. Just as the scientist mightinvestigate or search, and presume neutrality, we see that beneath this there is the mood, the concern of the scientistto discover, to reveal new ideas or theories and to attempt to level off temporal aspects.

Ereignis

is translated often as "an event," but is better understood in terms of something "coming into view." Itcomes from the German prefix,

er-

, comparable to 're-' in English and

Auge

, eye.

[13]

[14]

It is a noun coming from areflexive verb. Note that the German prefix

er-

also can connote an end or a fatality. A recent translation of the wordby Kenneth Maly and Parvis Emad renders the word as "enowning"; that in connection with things that arise andappear, that they are arising 'into their own'. Hubert Dreyfus defined the term as "things coming into themselves bybelonging together."Ereignis appears in Heidegger's later works and is not easily summarized. The most sustained treatment of the themeoccurs in the cryptic and difficult

Contributions to Philosophy

. In the following quotation he associates it with thefundamental idea of concern from

Being and Time

, the English etymology of

con-cern

is similar to that of theGerman:...we must return to what we call a concern. The word Ereignis (concern) has been lifted fromorganically developing language. Er-eignen (to concern) means, originally, to distinguish or discernwhich one's eyes see, and in seeing calling to oneself, ap-propriate. The word con-cern we shall nowharness as a theme word in the service of thought.

[15]

Heideggerian terminology256

Worldhood

Further information: World disclosureHeidegger gives us four ways of using the term world:1. "World" is used as an ontical concept, and signifies the totality of things which can be present-at-handwithin the world.2. "World" functions as an ontological term, and signifies the Being of those things we have justmentioned. And indeed 'world' can become a term for any realm which encompasses a multiplicity of entities: for instance, when one talks of the 'world' of a mathematician, 'world' signifies the realm of possible objects of mathematics.3. "World" can be understood in another ontical sense -- not, however, as those entities which Daseinessentially is not and which can be encountered within-the-world, but rather as the

wherein

a facticalDasein as such can be said to 'live'. "World" has here a pre-ontological existential signification. Hereagain there are different possibilities: "world" may stand for the 'public' we-world, or one's 'own' closest(domestic) environment.4. Finally, "world" designates the ontologico-existential concept of

worldhood

. Worldhood itself mayhave as its modes whatever structural wholes any special 'worlds' may have at the time; but it embracesin itself the

a priori

character of worldhood in general.

[16]

Note, it is the third definition that Heidegger normally uses.

Clearing

(German: Lichtung)

In German the word

Lichtung

means a clearing, as in, for example, a clearing in the woods. Since its root is theGerman word for light (

Licht

), it is sometimes also translated as "lighting," and in Heidegger's work it refers to thenecessity of a clearing in which anything at all can appear, the clearing in which some thing or idea can show itself,or be unconcealed.

[17]

Note the relation that this has to Aletheia (see the main article or the entry above) anddisclosure (

Erschlossenheit

).Being, but not beings, stands out as if in a clearing, or physically, as if in a space. Thus, Hubert Dreyfus writes,"things show up in the light of our understanding of being."

[18]

References

All citations referring to texts authored by Heidegger use "H.

x

" to refer to the original page number.

[1]Martin Heidegger,

Being and Time

, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.[2]Heidegger 1962, H.67-72[3]Heidegger 1962, H.247[4]Heidegger 1962, H.255[5]Heidegger 1962, H.253-4[6]Heidegger 1962, H.260-74[7]Being and Time (1962), pg. 25[8]Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa, "Further Reflections on Heidegger, Technology and the Everyday," in Nikolas Kompridis, ed.

Philosophical Romanticism

, New York:Routledge, 2006, 265.[9]Nikolas Kompridis, "On World Disclosure: Heidegger, Habermas and Dewey," Thesis Eleven 1994; 37; 29-45.[10]See Carlo Angelino,

“

Il religioso nel pensiero di Martin Heidegger,

”

in Martin Heidegger,

L

’

abbandono

, tr. Adriano Fabris (Genova: IlMelangolo, 1986) 19.[11]Michael Inwood,

A Heidegger Dictionary,

Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999, ISBN: 0-631-19195-3[12]Heidegger 1962, H.56[13]http://books.

google.

com/books?id=cVRgERTtIeEC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=ereignis+etymology&source=bl&ots=Ieh1CUhKeG&sig=l6CCuQ0J-eT1q-KluXRJ5v9Xxug&hl=no&ei=87-LSpjcL4GMsAbj_ojKDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=ereignis%20etymology&f=false

Heideggerian terminology257

[14]http://books.

google.

com/books?id=l52xC43N_2kC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=ereignis+etymology&source=bl&ots=opgRBXjjsv&sig=Wd3pXLVbxq23LgVqCXQxqPbdMUs&hl=no&ei=87-LSpjcL4GMsAbj_ojKDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8#v=onepage&q=ereignis%20etymology&f=false[15]Martin Heidegger,

Identity and Difference

, trans. Joan Stambaugh. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.[16]Heidegger 1962, H.64[17]Heidegger 1962, H.133[18]Hubert Dreyfus,

Being-in-the-World

. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995. p. 162

Heterophenomenology

("phenomenology

of another

not oneself") is a term coined by Daniel Dennett to describe anexplicitly third-person, scientific approach to the study of consciousness and other mental phenomena. It consists of applying the scientific method with an anthropological bent, combining the subject's self-reports with all otheravailable evidence to determine their mental state. The goal is to discover how the subject sees the world him- orherself, without taking the accuracy of the subject's view for granted.Heterophenomenology is put forth as the alternative to traditional Cartesian phenomenology, which Dennett calls"lone-wolf autophenomenology" to emphasize the fact that it accepts the subject's self-reports as being authoritative.In contrast, heterophenomenology considers the subjects authoritative only about how things

seem

to them.It can be refuted if one accepts that the subjective experience of a mental state is the thing-in-itself, disregarding anydifferential physical phenomena: the objective appearance of a subjective experience has no bearing on theexperience if the experience is what is being analysed - it is irrelevant to the agent what a state looks like to anindependent observer, only to himself, as the independent observer is not experiencing it (the observer is insteadsubjectively experiencing the objective appearance of the agent's subjective experience) - unless the objectiveappearance influences the subjective experience itself.Most arguments refuting strict behaviourism also refute heterophenomenology, as heterophenomenology is a form of reductionist strict behaviourism.In other words, heterophenomenology requires the researcher to listen to the subjects and take what they sayseriously, but to also look at everything else available to us, including the subject's bodily responses andenvironment, and be ready to conclude that the subject is wrong even about their own mind. For example, we coulddetermine that the subject is hungry even though they don't recognize it.The key role of heterophenomenology in Dennett's philosophy of consciousness is that it defines all that can or needsto be known about the mind. For any phenomenological question "why do I experience X", there is a correspondingheterophenomenological question "why does the subject say 'I experience X'". To quote Dennett, "The total set of details of heterophenomenology, plus all the data we can gather about concurrent events in the brains of subjects andin the surrounding environment, comprise the total data set for a theory of human consciousness. It leaves out noobjective phenomena and no subjective phenomena of consciousness."Dennett stresses that heterophenomenology does not dismiss the first-person perspective, but rather brackets it sothat it can be intersubjectively verified by empirical means, allowing it to be submitted as scientific evidence. Thiscan be seen by how heavily heterophenomenology relies on adopting the intentional stance toward subjects.Dennett flatly denies the existence of qualia, without proposing a counter-mechanism or counter-proposition, whichare posited as inherently subjective mental states which, by definition, could not be detected viaheterophenomenology, falling in to the trap of, "If we can not detect and measure a discrete

x

,

x

does not exist".Heterophenomenology has sometimes been considered "[a]rguably, a version of analytical or logical behaviorism".

[1]

Heterophenomenology258

References

•Dennett, D. "Heterophenomenology" in Dennett, D.

Consciousness Explained

, Penguin Press, 1991•Dennett, D. "Who's On First? Heterophenomenology Explained"

Journal of Consciousness Studies, Special Issue:Trusting the Subject? (Part 1)

, 10, No. 9-10, October 2003, pp. 19

–

30

[1](http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/behaviorism/)

External links

•Who

’

s On First? Heterophenomenology Explained (http://ase.

tufts.

edu/cogstud/papers/JCSarticle.pdf) byDaniel Dennett•Heterophenomenology Reconsidered (http://ase.

tufts.

edu/cogstud/papers/heteroreconsidered.

pdf) Dennettrevisits/clarifies his position in light of recent criticisms (on-line pre-print)

Identity and change

The relationship between

identity

and

change

in the philosophical field of metaphysics seems, at first glance,deceptively simple, and belies the complexity of the issues involved. This article explores "the problem of changeand identity".

Change

When an object changes, it always changes

in some particular way

. A baby grows up, and so changes in respect of size and maturity; a snake sheds its skin, and so changes in respect of its skin. "Change" may therefore be defined asfollows:An object,

O

, changes with respect to property,

P

, if and only if

O

has

P

at one time, and at a later time,

O

does not have

P

.That seems to be, in one way, what it means for a thing to change: it has a property at one time, and later it does nothave that property. If a banana becomes brown, it can then be said: at one time, the banana is yellow; several dayslater, the banana is not yellow, but is instead brown. This appears fairly straightforward at this point, and there are noapparent problems as yet.Another way for an object to change is to change its parts.An object,

O

, changes with respect to its part,

P

, if and only if

O

has the part

P

at one time, and at a later time,

O

does not have

P

.Some philosophers believe that an object can't persist through a change of parts. They defend mereologicalessentialism.

Problem of change

The question then arises as to what sort of change happens after a thing is

destroyed

? When a person dies, one doesnot say that the person's life has

changed

. Neither does one go around saying, "Harry just isn't the same sort of guysince he died." Instead, one says that Harry's life has

ended

. Similarly, when a building is demolished, one does notsay that the building 'changes'; one says that it is

destroyed

. So what sort of events, on the one hand, result in a merechange, and what sort of events, on the other hand, result in a thing's destruction

—

in the state of its existence? Thisis one aspect of the problem that will be considered here. It is called "the problem of change and identity".

Identity and change259

The Ship of Theseus

The "problem of change and identity" is generally explained with the story of the Ship of Theseus:In ancient times, there was a ship, called the "Theseus" after its famous former owner. As the years wore on,the Theseus started getting weak and creaky. The old boards were removed, put into a warehouse, and replacedwith new ones. Then, the masts started tottering, and soon they, too, were warehoused and replaced. And inthis way, after fifty years, this ship now has all new boards, masts, and everything. The question then arises: Isthe ship in the harbor, now called

S2

, the same ship as the ship that was in the harbor, fifty years ago (called

S1

, for convenience)? In other words, is

S2

really the "Theseus"?There is one answer which is a little too easy and quick. One might say: "No, of course not. The Theseus haschanged a lot, so it's not the same ship. At the end of your life, you're not going to be the same person as you were,when you were a teenager. You're going to change a lot in the meantime." However, this is not quite answering theintended question. What is intended by the question is the sense of the word, "same", in which an old woman is the

same

person at the end of her life as she is, at the beginning of her life. Certainly, the word, "same", has such a sense.After all, one implicitly depends on it when one says, for example, "She has changed a lot". In order for someone tochange a lot, there has to be

one person

who underwent the change. (One could perhaps reject that sense, saying thatobjects

do not

change over time.)Going back to the definition of "change", an object changes with respect to a property if the object has that propertyat one time, and at a later time, the object does not have the property. What changes is the fact that

the object has a particular property

. The only way that that fact

can

change is if the object remains in existence. One can thereforethink of a continuing object as the

ground

of change, or the arena where change occurs, as it were. To get back to theTheseus, the question is: Has the Theseus merely changed

a lot

, or is the Theseus gone, being replaced by a newship?One may say, "Sure, it's just a refurbished Theseus, greatly changed to be sure, but still the Theseus". If one thinks inthis manner, then consider what happens when the story is extended further. Suppose someone buys all the planks,masts and whatever that is stored in the warehouse, and out of all of those materials, and absolutely no others, hebuilds a ship according to the same plans that were used to build the ship, christened "the Theseus". And this ship,called

S3

, is launched and sits on the other side of the harbor where

S2

is. Is

S3

the same as

S1

? In other words, isthis recently-constructed ship, the same ship as the ship originally called the "Theseus", considering that

S3

was builtout of the

same materials

, and according to the

same plans

as

S1

.One could take this concept even further by not only the properties but also its subject matter of the "ship". What if instead the warehoused planks, masts, and other materials were used to build something completely different from aship, like a house. (A concept explored by the artist Simon Starling, who turned a shed into a working boat and thenback into a shed, winning him the 2005 Turner Prize.) The same materials and supplies are being used; yet they havetaken on a new form. This relates to the concept of recreation vs. destruction.Inevitably, the problem arises: How can one ever say that both

S2

and

S3

are the same ship as

S1

, the originalTheseus? This is because if they were both the same as

S1

, then they would have to be the same as each other. Thisfollows from transitivity, which states that if

x

=

y

and

x

=

z

, then

y

=

z

. With

S2

and

S3

being clearly different ships,sitting on opposite sides of the harbor, three choices present themselves:•

S2

is the same ship as

S1

;•

S3

is the same ship as

S1

; or•

neither

is the same ship as

S1

, and

S1

has ceased to exist.How does one then decide which is the correct answer in this case? It is difficult to tell. Whenever one makes anidentity claim (i.e. a claim which states that two things are the same), one almost always uses

two different descriptions

. Sometimes, one may say, "

x

=

x

", like "I am I", but such claims are not particularly interesting orinformative. The interesting identity claims are claims where two different descriptions are used for one and the

Identity and change260same thing. As an example, take these two descriptions: "the Morning Star", and "the Evening Star". Sometimes, onecan look in the sky just before dawn, and see a very bright point of light

—

that has been called "the Morning Star".And then also, one can look in the sky just after sunset, and see a very similar point

—

that has been called "theEvening Star". The Morning Star is, in fact, identical to the Evening Star

—

both are the planet Venus. As such, theyare "two" things, only in description, but in actuality, are one and the same thing under two different descriptions.It is a similar case with

S1

,

S2

, and

S3

, those being three different abbreviations, standing for the followingdescriptions:•"

S1

", referring to the ship which sat in the harbor fifty years ago, newly christened "the Theseus";•"

S2

", referring to the ship which sits in the harbor now, with the new planks; and•"

S3

", referring to the ship which sits in the harbor, recently constructed out of the old planks.When one, therefore, asks a question like, "Is

S2

the same as

S1

?", one can be understood to mean this: "Is the shipwhich sits in the harbor now, with the new planks,

the same ship

as the ship which sat in the harbor fifty years ago,newly christened "the Theseus"?" Do those two descriptions refer to the same thing, or do they not?Philosophers are not interested in the "Ship of Theseus" problem

per se

, but to a more basic problem which is this:How does one decide that

X

is the same as

Y

, where

X

describes something at one time, and

Y

describes another thingat a later time? This is called the "problem of identity over time", or alternatively, the "problem of change".

Leibniz's solution

The German philosopher, Gottfried Leibniz, came up with what is now called Leibniz's law (see Identity of indiscernibles) that may have some bearing on the question. Leibniz's law states:

X

is the same as

Y

if, and only if,

X

and

Y

have all the same properties and relations; thus, whatever is true of

X

is also true of

Y

, and vice-versa.Applying Leibniz's Law to the Ship of Theseus problem,

S2

is the same as

S1

if, and only if,

S2

and

S1

have all thesame properties and relations.

Does

the ship now in the harbor have all the same properties and relations as the shipthat was in the harbor fifty years ago? One might be tempted to say, "Clearly not! They have

lots

of differentproperties. So they can't be the same ship." Does that sound convincing? To answer this question, let us consider theproperty, "contains mast #1". Mast #1 is one of the masts that the original Ship of Theseus had.

S1

definitely had thisproperty, but

S2

is not so equipped, but has mast #2, instead. It follows that

S2

must therefore be different from

S1

.Many philosophers strongly oppose this view. For if this argument works, then

any

property that has changed fromthe last time we looked at a thing would mean that the thing does not exist anymore, and there is a new thing in itsplace. Every little change in every little property would mean the whole thing is destroyed. Suppose we look at

S1

just a couple of years after it was built. If just one plank has been replaced, will we say that the ship is a differentship? Many philosophers would say surely not, as would common sense. But the ship that is floating on the ocean fora couple of years

does

have different properties from the original. Leibniz's Law would have us say that it is adifferent ship. One might see all this and conclude, "Well, Leibniz's Law must not be a law at all, but a false claim!

X

and

Y

do not need to have all the same properties to be the same thing."Leibniz's Law

can

be saved, by saying: Properties are to be described as occurring at particular times, i.e. they are

indexed to times

. A property that is described as at a particular time is said to be "temporally-indexed". For example,we can say that

S1

has mast #1

in 600 BC

. If we say what time the ship has the mast, then we have indexed theproperty of having the mast to that time. We say the ship

has

the mast then, using the word, "has", tenselessly. Thatmeans we do not say that it,

at present

, has the mast, but rather, we say it "has" the mast in 600 BC. We are notclaiming that the ship has the mast at any

other

time; just at

that

time. But if it were a later time, say 550 BC,

that very same ship

could "have" mast #1

in 600 BC

, considering that we are talking about a tenseless "have". That is, italways has the same properties, but the properties are of the form

P

-at-

T

. This gives us a way to save Leibniz's Lawfrom the objection we gave, but at the same time, brings up the issue of whether

change

really occurs. After all, we

Identity and change261defined "change" as something having one property at one time, and not at some later time. By this solution though,any given object always has all the properties throughout time, and the properties are merely temporally-specific.Putting this in plain English,

S1

now

has the property that it

will

have mast #2; and S2

now

has the property that it

did

have mast #1. We can then say that

S1

and

S2

have all the same

temporally-indexed properties

. According toLeibniz's Law, therefore, they would be the same ship.One might also say, through the same sorts of contortions that

S1

and

S3

might

have the same temporally-indexedproperties. It then follows from Leibniz's Law that

they instead

would be the same ship.Can Leibniz's Law help us decide whether it is

S2

or

S3

that is the same as the original Theseus? Perhaps not byitself. Leibniz's Law says that some ships are the same, just in case, they have all the same properties and relations

—

or, rather, the same

temporally-indexed

properties and relations. How then is one to decide that they have all thesame temporally-indexed properties and relations? Leibniz's Law seems to offer little or no help when it comes tothat decision.

Pragmatic solution

One popular solution to the problem of the Ship of Theseus is to say that the meaning of "same" depends on whatpurpose the word is being used for. If, supposing it turns out that the original Ship of Theseus,

S1

, was actuallystolen property, and the rightful owner demands its return, should the police give him

S2

or

S3

? Instead of figuringout which ship, if either, is the "same", and then declaring that it should be returned, the pragmatic solution is tofigure out which ship should be returned, and then declare that it is the "same". The current owner of

S2

could arguethat the original owner did not pay for any of the labor or materials of

S2

, but did provide at least the materials for

S3

. Thus, the original owner should not be entitled to

S2

, but rather, some or all of

S3

. For the purpose of legalentitlement, therefore, part or all of

S3

is the same as

S1

.Now, let us say that the purpose is not legal entitlement, but rather, the following situation: The admiral of the fleetbelieves that captains and crews who have fought alongside each other are more effective than captains and crewswho are strangers to each other. The admiral then declares that captains must serve at least one year on the sameship. One day, Captain Hercules takes command of the Theseus, and then transfers 18 months later. During this time,the ship's materials are completely replaced as in the previous example, but the crew stays the same. Is

S2

=

S1

,

S3

=

S1

, both, or neither? For the admiral's purpose,

S2

=

S1

because

S2

has the same crew as

S1

, and Captain Herculeshas thus fulfilled the admiral's objective.Thus, whether

S2

,

S3

, both, or neither is the same ship as

S1

is a matter of convention and what purposes we have forconsidering things to be the same or different. Two objects may be considered the same for one purpose, and yetdifferent for another. Is a watch, received as a gift, still the same after it hits the chain saw? For the purpose of returning it, no. But it will always have that same sentimental value. See pragmatism.

The ship of Theseus problem: a non-receivable question

One way of thinking about the Ship of Theseus problem is as follows: It is a question that is not receivable becauseof the mismatch between the domain of the question and the domain of the subject matter it is applied to. Let usreview the three main knowledge domains of concern here:•

A

, the real ontological universe that exists and happens by itself;•

B

, our reality or how we experience the real universe,

A

; and•

C

, or our scientific analysis of our reality,

B

.The distinction between

B

and

C

is demonstrated in the following example: In the evening, one can go out and see atthe same moment the sun setting, the moon and a few stars; this is our reality or

B

. In the scientific domain

C

,however, the analysis of

B

reveals that the stars are thousands of light years away, the sun is eight light minutesaway, and the moon is about a light second away. Since one cannot logically consider these subjects to be both "at

Identity and change262the same moment" and "away in time", an exclusive choice has to be made that defines these two separate domains,

B

and

C

. Our reality or domain

B

is created by the complex, but consistent transformation of

A

by our biological andmental makeup. Therefore, domain

B

, or our reality, is internally logical. The scientific knowledge, or domain

C

, iscreated by the application of a consistent methodology of analysis of our reality,

B

. Therefore, the scientific domainis internally logical. Domains

B

and

C

each have their own internal logic, derived from a consistent approachrespecting both processes and subject matter. Using the questions or processes of one domain on the subject matterof another domain will logically produce puzzles, paradoxes, and inconsistencies. The Ship of Theseus problem is anexample of such an inconsistency created by the use of the question of identity proper to the ontology of domain

A

,applied to the subject matter of domain

B

, our reality. The question about the identity of the Ship of Theseus issimply not receivable and comes from the poor practice of not respecting the proper correspondence of the questiondomain to the subject matter domain. The problem of identity is an ontological problem, and should therefore beapplied to the (metaphysical) subject matter of domain

A

, the real universe.

Persistence over time

Common-sense tells us that objects persist across time, that there is some sense in which you are the same personyou were yesterday, in which the oak is the same as the acorn, in which you perhaps even can step into the sameriver twice. Philosophers have developed two rival theories for how this happens, called

endurantism

and

perdurantism

. Broadly speaking, endurantists hold that a whole object exists at each moment of its history, and thesame object exists at each moment, while perdurantists believe that objects are 4-dimensional entities made up of aseries of temporal parts like the frames of a movie.

Identity and change in conscious beings

The problem of personal identity relates to change as applied to people. The molecules that make up each individualchange almost completely over a period of years. Usually, there is no trouble in saying that a little girl in 1920, forexample, is the same as an old woman in 1998, even though they share a relatively small number of molecules incommon. The same person is just described in two different ways, first as a little girl, and second, as an old woman.In fact, we are confident enough of our ability to reidentify people over time that we are given names that aresupposed to last us from when we get them until we die many years later. The question is exactly why we call the oldwoman in 1998

the same person

as that little girl in 1920.However, according to quantum physics, individual molecules (and atoms, electrons, protons etc.) have no identity.For example, every electron is the same and in quantum mechanics, one can not keep track of an individual electronprecisely. Therefore any electron can interchange with another one with no observable physical change of the systemat all. Thus, any real object cannot remain the same, also because of movement of its physical parts (even muchbigger than molecules). Similarly to Leibniz solution, in a real life, we can say the person (or any macroscopicobject) is the same, because all signs refer to the person (or object) in the past, which evolved in time.

Identity and change263

External links

•Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on temporal parts

[1]

•Carsten Korfmacher, 'Personal Identity'

[2]

, in "The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy"

References

[1]http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/temporal-parts/ [2]http://www.

iep.

utm.

edu/p/person-i.htm

Intentionality

The term

intentionality

was introduced by Jeremy Bentham as a principle of utility in his doctrine of consciousnessfor the purpose of distinguishing acts that are intentional and acts that are not.

[1]

The term was later used by EdmundHusserl in his doctrine that consciousness is always intentional, a concept that he undertook in connection withtheses set forth by Franz Brentano regarding the ontological and psychological status of objects of thought. It hasbeen defined as "aboutness", and according to the Oxford English Dictionary it is "the distinguishing property of mental phenomena of being necessarily directed upon an object, whether real or imaginary".

[2]

It is in this sense andthe usage of Husserl that the term is primarily used in contemporary philosophy. The concept of intentionality has itsfoundation in scholastic philosophy with the earliest theory being associated with St. Anselm's ontological argumentfor the existence of God and his tenets distinguishing between objects that exist in the understanding and objects thatexist in reality.

[3]

The modern overview

The concept of intentionality was reintroduced in 19th-century contemporary philosophy by the philosopher andpsychologist Franz Brentano in his work

Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint

(1874). Brentano describedintentionality as a characteristic of all acts of consciousness, "psychical" or "mental" phenomena, by which it couldbe set apart from "physical" or "natural" phenomena.

“

Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of anobject, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction towards an object (which is not to beunderstood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, althoughthey do not all do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgement something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, inhate hated, in desire desired and so on. This intentional in-existence is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. No physicalphenomenon exhibits anything like it. We could, therefore, define mental phenomena by saying that they are those phenomena which containan object intentionally within themselves.

”

—

Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, edited by Linda L. McAlister (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 88

–

89.

Brentano coined the expression "intentional inexistence" to indicate the peculiar ontological status of the contents of mental phenomena. According to some interpreters the "in-" of "in-existence" is to be read as locative, i.e. asindicating that "an intended object [...] exists in or has

in-existence

, existing not externally but in the psychologicalstate" (Jacquette 2004, p. 102), while others are more cautious, affirming that: "It is not clear whether in 1874 this[...] was intended to carry any ontological commitment" (Chrudzimski and Smith 2004, p. 205).A major problem within intentionality discourse is that participants often fail to make explicit whether or not theyuse the term to imply concepts such as agency or desire, i.e. whether it involves teleology. Dennett (see below)explicitly invokes teleological concepts in the "intentional stance". However, most philosophers use intentionality tomean something with no teleological import. Thus, a thought of a chair can be about a chair without any implicationof an intention or even a belief relating to the chair. For philosophers of language, intentionality is largely an issue of how symbols can have meaning. This lack of clarity may underpin some of the differences of view indicated below.

Intentionality264To bear out further the diversity of sentiment evoked from the notion of intentionality, Husserl followed onBrentano, and gave intentionality more widespread attention, both in continental and analytic philosophy. In contrastto Brentano's view, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (

Being and Nothingness

) identified intentionality withconsciousness, stating that the two were indistinguishable.

[4]

German philosopher Martin Heidegger (

Being and Time

), defined intentionality as "care" (

Sorge

), a sentient condition where an individual's existentiality, facticity, andforfeiture to the world identifies their ontological significance, in contrast to that which is the mere ontic(thinghood).

[5]

Other 20th-century philosophers such as Gilbert Ryle and A.J. Ayer were critical of Husserl's concept of intentionality and his many layers of consciousness, Ryle insisting that perceiving is not a process and Ayer thatdescribing one's knowledge is not to describe mental processes. The effect of these positions is that consciousness isso fully intentional that the mental act has been emptied of all content and the idea of pure consciousness is that it isnothing (Sartre also referred to "consciousness" as "nothing").Platonist Roderick Chisholm has revived the Brentano thesis through linguistic analysis, distinguishing two parts toBrentano's concept, the ontological aspect and the psychological aspect. Chisholm's writings have attempted tosummarize the suitable and unsuitable criteria of the concept since the Scholastics, arriving at a criterion of intentionality identified by the two aspects of Brentano's thesis and defined by the logical properties that distinguishlanguage describing psychological phenomena from language describing non-psychological phenomena. Chisholm'scriteria for the intentional use of sentences are: existence independence, truth-value indifference, and referentialopacity.In current artificial intelligence and philosophy of mind intentionality is a controversial subject and sometimesclaimed to be something that a machine will never achieve. John Searle argued for this position with the Chineseroom thought experiment, according to which no syntactic operations that occurred in a computer would provide itwith semantic content.

Dennett's taxonomy of current theories about intentionality

Daniel Dennett offers a taxonomy of the current theories about intentionality in Chapter 10 of his book

The Intentional Stance

. Most, if not all, current theories on intentionality accept Brentano's thesis of the irreducibility of intentional idiom. From this thesis the following positions emerge:•intentional idiom is problematic for science;•intentional idiom is not problematic for science, which is divided into:•Eliminative Materialism;•Realism;•Quinean double standard (see below) which is divided into:•adherence to Normative Principle, which is divided into:•who makes an Assumption of Rationality;•who follows the Principle of Charity;•adherence to Projective Principle.

Intentionality265

Is Intentionality discourse a problem for science?

Roderick Chisholm (1956), G.E.M. Anscombe (1957), Peter Geach (1957), and Charles Taylor (1964) all adhere tothe former position, namely that intentional idiom is problematic and cannot be integrated with the natural sciences.Members of this category also maintain realism in regard to intentional objects, which may imply some kind of dualism (though this is debatable).The latter position, which maintains the unity of intentionality with the natural sciences, is further divided into threestandpoints:•

Eliminative Materialism

, supported by W.V. Quine (1960) and Churchland (1981)•

Realism

, advocated by Jerry Fodor (1975), as well as Burge, Dretske, Kripke, and the early Hilary Putnam•those who adhere to the

Quinean double standard

.

Intentionality poses no problem for science

Proponents of the

eliminative materialism

, understand intentional idiom, such as "belief", "desire", and the like, tobe replaceable either with behavioristic language (e.g. Quine) or with the language of neuroscience (e.g.Churchland).Holders of

realism

argue, in contrast to those in support of C, that there is a deeper fact of the matter to bothtranslation and belief attribution. In other words, manuals for translating one language into another cannot be set upin different yet behaviorally identical ways and ontologically there are intentional objects. Famously, Fodor hasattempted to ground such realist claims about intentionality in a language of thought. Dennett comments on thisissue, Fodor "attempt[s] to make these irreducible realities acceptable to the physical sciences by grounding them(somehow) in the 'syntax' of a system of physically realized mental representations" (Dennett 1987, 345).Those who adhere to the so-called

Quinean double standard

(namely that

ontologically there is nothingintentional, but that the language of intentionality is indispensable

), accept Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of radical translation and its implications, while the other positions so far mentioned do not. As Quine puts it,indeterminacy of radical translation is the thesis that "manuals for translating one language into another can be set upin divergent ways, all compatible with the totality of speech dispositions, yet incompatible with one another" (Quine1960, 27). Quine (1960) and Wilfrid Sellars (1958) both comment on this intermediary position. One suchimplication would be that there is, in principle, no deeper fact of the matter that could settle two interpretativestrategies on what belief to attribute to a physical system. In other words, the behavior (including speechdispositions) of any physical system, in theory, could be interpreted by two different predictive strategies and bothwould be equally warranted in their belief attribution. This category can be seen to be a medial position between therealists and the eliminativists since it attempts to blend attributes of both into a theory of intentionality. Dennett, forexample, argues in

True Believers

(1981) that intentional idiom (or "folk psychology") is a predictive strategy and if such a strategy successfully and voluminously predicts the actions of a physical system, then that physical systemcan be said to have those beliefs attributed to it. Dennett calls this predictive strategy the intentional stance.They are further divided into two theses:•adherence to the

Normative Principle

•adherence to the

Projective Principle

Advocates of the former, the Normative Principle, argue that attributions of intentional idioms to physical systemsshould be the propositional attitudes that the physical system ought to have in those circumstances (Dennett 1987,342). However, exponents of this view are still further divided into those who make an

Assumption of Rationality

and those who adhere to the

Principle of Charity

. Dennett (1969, 1971, 1975), Cherniak (1981, 1986), and the morerecent work of Putnam (1983) recommend the Assumption of Rationality, which unsurprisingly assumes that thephysical system in question is rational. Donald Davidson (1967, 1973, 1974, 1985) and Lewis (1974) defend thePrinciple of Charity.

Intentionality266The latter is advocated by Grandy (1973) and Stich (1980, 1981, 1983, 1984), who maintain that attributions of intentional idioms to any physical system (e.g. humans, artifacts, non-human animals, etc.) should be thepropositional attitude (e.g. "belief", "desire", etc.) that one would suppose one would have in the same circumstances(Dennett 1987, 343).

Basic intentionality types in Le Morvan

Working on the intentionality of vision, belief, and knowledge, Pierre Le Morvan (2005)

[6]

has distinguishedbetween three basic kinds of intentionality that he dubs "transparent", "translucent", and "opaque" respectively. Thethreefold distinction may be explained as follows. Let's call the "intendum" what an intentional state is about, and the"intender" the subject who is in the intentional state. An intentional state is transparent if it satisfies the followingtwo conditions: (i) it is genuinely relational in that it entails the existence of not just the intender but the intendum aswell, and (ii) substitutivity of identicals applies to the intendum (i.e. if the intentional state is about a, and a = b, thenthe intentional state is about b as well). An intentional state is translucent if it satisfies (i) but not (ii). An intentionalstate is opaque if it satisfies neither (i) nor (ii).

Intentionality, Semiotics and Art Criticism

The question of interpretation of art with regard to the producer's intentions has been the subject of much debate. Thetraditional, commonsense view that the key to understanding works of art can be located in the intentions of theauthor, has been critiqued convincingly by authors such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault who emphasise theactive role of the viewer/reader in creating meaning in visual and written texts. A generalized semiotic view isdeveloped in biosemiotics, which states that intentionality is a criterial feature of life, thus interpreting the organicneeds to be the primary form of intentions.

Intentionality vs. intensionality

Intentionality should not be confused with intensionality, a related concept from logic and semantics.

Notes

[1]Bentham, Jeremy.

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

. Chapters VIII and IX. 1780[2]"intentionality, n." [[Oxford English Dictionary (http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50118718?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=intentionality&first=1&max_to_show=10)] Additions Series. 1993.] OED Online. Oxford University Press. 17 Aug. 2008.[3]Chisholm, Roderick M. (1967) "Intentionality" in

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy

. Vol. 4, p. 201.[4]Being and Nothingness (http://www.filefactory.com/dlf/f/af7b028/b/6/h/2afe079585c7c44832fb2b357ef1855976c39e54/j/0/n/ sartre_-_being_and_nothingness.pdf) Pg. 113[5]Heidiger, Being and Time, Pg. 84 (http://books.google.com.

au/books?id=S57m5gW0L-MC&q=sorge#v=snippet&q="to be made visibleas care"&f=false) at Google Books[6]http://www.

tcnj.

edu/~lemorvan/JPR_Proof.pdf

References

•Brentano, Franz (1874)

Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte

Leipzig, Duncker & Humblot•Chisholm, Roderick M. (1967). "Intentionality" in

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy

. Macmillan. ISBN978-0028949901•Chisholm, Roderick M. (1963). "Notes on the Logic of Believing" in

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

. Vol. 24: p. 195-201. Reprinted in Marras, Ausonio. Ed. (1972)

Intentionality, mind, and language

.ISBN 0252002113•Chisholm, Roderick M. (1957).

Perceiving: A Philosophical Study

. Cornell University Press. ISBN978-0801400773

Intentionality267•Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Barry Smith (2004) "Brentano

’

s Ontology: from Conceptualism to Reism" inJacquette (ed.)

The Cambridge Companion to Brentano

ISBN 0521-00765-8•Dennett, Daniel C. (1989).

The Intentional Stance

. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262540537•Husserl, Edmund (1962).

Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology

. Collier Books. ISBN978-0415295444•Husserl, Edmund.

Logical Investigations.

ISBN 978-1573928663•Jacquette, Dale (2004) "Brentano

’

s Concept of Intentionality" in Jacquette (ed.)

The Cambridge Companion to Brentano

ISBN 0521-00765-8•Le Morvan, Pierre (2005). "Intentionality: Transparent, Translucent, and Opaque".

The Journal of Philosophical Research,

30, p. 283-302.•Malle, B. F., Moses, L. J., & Baldwin, D. A. (Eds.) (2003).

Intentions and Intentionality: Foundations of SocialCognition.

The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262632676.•Mohanty, Jitendra Nath (1972).

The Concept of Intentionality: A Critical Study

. St. Louis, MO: Warren H. Green,1972. ISBN 978-0875271156•Quine, W.V. (1960).

Word and Object.

The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262670012.

Further reading

•Davidson, Donald. "Truth and Meaning". Synthese, XVII, pp. 304

–

23. 1967.•Dreyfus, Georges. "Is Perception Intentional? (A Preliminary Exploration of Intentionality in Indian Philosophy)."2006.•Fodor, J. "The Language of Thought". Harvard University Press. 1980. ISBN 0674510305•Sajama, Seppo & Kamppinen, Matti.

Historical Introduction to Phenomenology

. New York, NY: Croom Helm,1987. ISBN 0709944438•Stich, Stephen. "Relativism, Rationality, and the Limits of Intentional Description". Pacific PhilosophicalQuarterly, 65, pp. 211

–

35. 1984.•Williford, Kenneth. "The Intentionality of Consciousness and Consciousness of Intentionality. In G. Forrai and G.Kampis, eds., Intentionality: Past and Future. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 143

–

156. 2005. ISBN 9042018178

External links

•Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:•Intentionality (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/intentionality/)•Consciousness and Intentionality (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-intentionality/)•Ancient Theories of Intentionality (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intentionality-ancient/)

Introspect268

Introspect

Introspection

is the self-observation and reporting of conscious inner thoughts, desires and sensations. It is aconscious and purposive process relying on thinking, reasoning, and examining one's own thoughts, feelings, and, inmore spiritual cases, one's soul. It can also be called

contemplation

of one's self, and is contrasted with extrospection,the observation of things external to one's self. Introspection may be used synonymously with and in a similar way tohuman self-reflection.Introspection is like the activity described by Plato when he asked, "

…

why should we not calmly and patientlyreview our own thoughts, and thoroughly examine and see what these appearances in us really are?"

[1]

[2]

As a method in science

Behaviorists claimed that introspection was unreliable and that the subject matter of scientific psychology should bestrictly operationalized inan objective and measurable way. This then led psychology to focus on measurablebehavior rather than consciousness or sensation.

[3]

Cognitive psychology accepts the use of the scientific method, butoften rejects introspection as a valid method of investigation for this reason, especially concerning the causes of behavior and choice. Herbert Simon and Allen Newell identified the 'think aloud protocol', in which investigatorsview a subject engaged in a task, and who speaks his thoughts aloud, thus allowing study of his thought processwithout forcing the subject to comment on his thinking.On the other hand, introspection can be considered a valid tool for the development of scientific hypotheses andtheoretical models, in particular in cognitive sciences and engineering. In practice, functional (goal-oriented)computational modeling and computer simulation design of meta-reasoning and metacognition are closely connectedwith the introspective experiences of researchers and engineers.Introspection was used byGerman physiologist Wilhelm Wundt in the experimental psychology laboratory he hadfounded in Leipzig in 1879. Wundt believed that by using introspection in his experiments he would gatherinformation into how the subjects' minds were working, thus he wanted to examine the mind into its basic elements.Wundt did not invent this way of looking into an individual's mind through their experiences; rather, it can date toSocrates. Wundt's distinctive contribution was to take this method into the experimental arena and thus into thenewly formed field of psychology.

Inaccessible mental processes and confabulation

Psychological research on cognition and attributionhas asked people to report on their mental processes, for instance to say why they made a particular choice or how they arrived at a judgment. In some situations, these reports areclearly confabulated.

[4]

For example, people justify choices they have not in fact made.

[5]

Such results undermine theidea that thoseverbal reports are based on direct introspective access to mental content. Instead, judgements aboutone's own mind seem to be inferences from overt behavior, similar to judgements made about another person.

[4]

However, it is hard to assess whether these results only apply to unusual experimental situations, or if they revealsomething about everyday introspection.

[6]

The theory of the adaptive unconscious suggests that a very largeproportion of mental processes, even "high-level" processes like goal-setting and decision-making, are inaccessibleto introspection.

[7]

Even when their introspections are uninformative, people still give confident descriptions of their mental processes,being "unaware of their unawareness".

[8]

This phenomenon has been termed the

introspection illusion

and has beenused to explain some cognitive biases

[9]

and belief in some paranormal phenomena.

[10]

When making judgementsabout themselves, subjects treat their own introspections as reliable, whereas they judge other people based on theirbehavior.

[11]

This can lead to illusions of superiority. For example, people generally see themselves as lessconformist than others, and this seems to be because they do not introspect any urge to conform.

[12]

Another reliable

Introspect269finding is that people generally see themselves as less biased than everyone else, because they are not likely tointrospect any biased thought processes.

[11]

These introspections are misleading, however, because biases worksub-consciously. One experiment tried to give their subjects access to others' introspections. They made audiorecordings of subjects who had been told to say whatever came into their heads as they answered a question abouttheir own bias.

[11]

Although subjects persuaded themselves they were unlikely to be biased, their introspectivereports did not sway the assessments of observers. When subjects were explicitly told to avoid relying onintrospection, their assessments of their own bias became more realistic.

[11]

Eastern spirituality

In Eastern Christianity, some of the concepts critical to addressing the needs of man such as sober introspection,called nepsis, are specific to watchfulness of the human heart and address the conflicts of the human

nous

, heart ormind. Also noetic understanding can not be circumvented nor satisfied by rationalizing or discursive thought (i.e.systemization).

In fiction

Introspections (also referred to as internal dialogue, interior monologue, self-talk) is the fiction-writing mode used toconvey a character's thoughts. As explained by Renni Browne and Dave King, "One of the great gifts of literature isthat it allows for the expression of unexpressed thoughts

…

" (Browne and King 2004, p. 117).According to Nancy Kress, a character's thoughts can greatly enhance a story: deepening characterization, increasingtension, and widening the scope of a story (Kress 2003, p. 38). As outlined by Jack M. Bickham, thought plays acritical role in both scene and sequel (Bickham 1993, pp. 12

–

22, 50

–

58).

Further reading

•Boring, Edwin G. (1953). "A history of introspection"

[13]

.

Psychological Bulletin

50

(3): 169

–

189.doi:10.1037/h0090793. PMID 13056096. Retrieved 2009-07-17.•Anthony Jack, Andreas Roepstorff, ed (2003).

Trusting the subject?: the use of introspective evidence in cognitivescience

. Imprint Academic. ISBN 9780907845560.•Wilson, Timothy (2002).

Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious

. Cambridge: BelknapPress. ISBN 0-674-00936-3.•Wilson, Timothy D. Wilson; Sara D. Hodges (1992). "Attitudes as Temporary Constructions". In Leonard L.Martin, Abraham Tesser.

The Construction of social judgments

. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.ISBN 9780805811490.

Notes

[1]

Theaetetus

, 155[2]J Perner et al (2007). "

Introspection & remembering

". Synthese. Springer.[3]Wilson, Robert Andrew; Keil, Frank C. (Eds.) (2001).

The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (MITECS)

(http://books.

google.com/?id=-wt1aZrGXLYC&printsec=frontcover). Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-73144-7. . Cf. p.xx[4]Nisbett, Richard E.; Timothy D. Wilson (1977). "Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes".

Psychological Review

8

: 231

–

259., reprinted in David Lewis Hamilton, ed (2005).

Social cognition: key readings

. Psychology Press. ISBN 9780863775918.[5]Johansson, Petter; Lars Hall, Sverker Sikström, Betty Tärning, Andreas Lind (2006). "How something can be said about telling more than wecan know: On choice blindness and introspection".

Consciousness and Cognition

(Elsevier)

15

(4): 673

–

692.doi:10.1016/j.concog.2006.09.004. PMID 17049881.[6]White, Peter A. (1988). "Knowing more about what we can tell: 'Introspective access' and causal report accuracy 10 years later".

British Journal of Psychology

(British Psychological Society)

79

(1): 13

–

45. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1988.tb02271.x.[7]Wilson, Timothy D.; Elizabeth W. Dunn (2004). "Self-Knowledge: Its Limits, Value, and Potential for Improvement".

Annual Review of Psychology

55

: 493

–

518. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.141954. PMID 14744224.

Introspect270

[8]Wilson, Timothy D.; Yoav Bar-Anan (August 22, 2008). "The Unseen Mind".

Science

(American Association for the Advancement of Science)

321

(5892): 1046

–

1047. doi:10.1126/science.1163029. PMID 18719269.[9]Pronin, Emily (January 2007). "Perception and misperception of bias in human judgment".

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

(Elsevier)

11

(1):37

–

43. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.11.001. ISSN 1364-6613. PMID 17129749.[10]Wegner, Daniel M. (2008). "Self is Magic" (http://isites.harvard.

edu/fs/docs/icb.

topic67047.

files/2_13_07_Wegner.

pdf). In JohnBaer, James C. Kaufman, Roy F. Baumeister.

Are we free?: psychology and free will

. New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN 9780195189636. . Retrieved 2008-07-02.[11]Pronin, Emily; Matthew B. Kugler (July 2007). "Valuing thoughts, ignoring behavior: The introspection illusion as a source of the bias blindspot".

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

(Elsevier)

43

(4): 565

–

578. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2006.05.011. ISSN 0022-1031.[12]Pronin, Emily; Jonah Berger, Sarah Molouki (2007). "Alone in a Crowd of Sheep: Asymmetric Perceptions of Conformity and Their Rootsin an Introspection Illusion".

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

(American Psychological Association)

92

(4): 585

–

595.doi:10.1037/0022-3514.92.4.585. ISSN 022-3514. PMID 17469946.[13]http://www-psych.

stanford.edu/~knutson/aaa/boring53.

pdf

References

•Schultz, D. P. & Schultz, S. E. (2004). A history of modern psychology (8th ed.). Belmont, CA:Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.•Bickham, Jack M. (1993). Scene & Structure. Writer's Digest Books. ISBN 0-89879-551-6.•Browne & King (2004). Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself into Print. New York: HarperResource. ISBN 0-06-054569-0•Gillespie, A. (2006). Descartes

’

demon: A dialogical analysis of

‘

Meditations on First Philosophy.

’

(http://www.psychology.

stir.

ac.

uk/staff/agillespie/documents/ GillespieDescartesdemonadialogicalanalysisofmeditationsonfirstphilosophy.

pdf) Theory & Psychology, 16,761-781.•Gillespie, A. (2007). The social basis of self-reflection (http://www.

psychology.stir.ac.

uk/staff/agillespie/ documents/GillespieThesocialbasisofself-reflection.

pdf). In Jaan Valsiner and Alberto Rosa (Eds), TheCambridge Handbook of Socio-Cultural Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.•Kress, Nancy (August 2003), Writer's Digest.

External links

•Introspection (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/introspection) entry by Eric Schwitzgebel in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

•Introspection in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://www.

iep.

utm.edu/i/introspe.

htm)

Level of consciousness272

Definition

Scales and terms to classify the levels of consciousness differ, but in general, reduction in response to stimuliindicates an altered level of consciousness:

Levels of consciousness

LevelSummary (Kruse)[4]DescriptionConscious

NormalAssessment of LOC involves checking orientation: people who are able promptly and spontaneously to statetheir name, location, and the date or time are said to be oriented to self, place, and time, or "oriented X3".[9]A normal sleep stage from which a person is easily awakened is also considered a normal level of consciousness.[10]"Clouding of consciousness" is a term for a mild alteration of consciousness withalterations in attention and wakefulness.[10]

Confused

Disoriented; impairedthinking and responsesPeople who do not respond quickly with information about their name, location, and the time are considered"obtuse" or "confused".[9]A confused person may be bewildered, disoriented, and have difficulty followinginstructions.[10]The person may have slow thinking and possible memory time loss. This could be causedby sleep deprivation, malnutrition, allergies, environmental pollution, drugs (prescription andnonprescription), and infection.

Delirious

Disoriented;restlessness,hallucinations,sometimes delusionsSome scales have "delirious" below this level, in which a person may be restless or agitated and exhibit amarked deficit in attention.[4]

Somnolent

SleepyA

somnolent

person shows excessive drowsiness and responds to stimuli only with incoherent mumbles ordisorganized movements.[9]

Obtunded

Decreased alertness;slowed psychomotorresponsesIn

obtundation

, a person has a decreased interest in their surroundings, slowed responses, andsleepiness.[10]

Stuporous

Sleep-like state (notunconscious); little/nospontaneous activityPeople with an even lower level of consciousness, stupor, only respond by grimacing or drawing away frompainful stimuli.[9]

Comatose

Cannot be aroused; noresponse to stimuliComatose people do not even make this response to stimuli, have no corneal or gag reflex, and they mayhave no pupillary response to light.[9]

Glasgow Coma Scale

The most commonly used tool for measuring LOC objectively is the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS). It has come intoalmost universal use for assessing people with brain injury,

[4]

or an altered level of consciousness. Verbal, motor,and eye-opening responses to stimuli are measured, scored, and added into a final score on a scale of 3

–

15, with alower score being a more decreased level of consciousness.

Others

The AVPU scale is another means of measuring LOC: people are assessed to determine whether they are

a

lert,responsive to

v

erbal stimuli, responsive to

p

ainful stimuli, or

u

nresponsive.

[5]

[8]

To determine responsiveness tovoice, a caregiver speaks to, or, failing that, yells at the person.

[5]

Responsiveness to pain is determined with a mildpainful stimulus such as a pinch; moaning or withdrawal from the stimulus is considered a response to pain.

[5]

TheACDU scale, like AVPU, is easier to use than the GCS and produces similarly accurate results.

[11]

Using ACDU, apatient is assessed for

a

lertness,

c

onfusion,

d

rowsiness, and

u

nresponsiveness.

[11]

The Grady Coma Scale classes people on a scale of I to V along a scale of confusion, stupor, deep stupor, abnormalposturing, and coma.

[10]

Level of consciousness273

Differential diagnosis

A lowered level of consciousness indicate a deficit in brain function.

[6]

Level of consciousness can be lowered whenthe brain receives insufficient oxygen (as occurs in hypoxia); insufficient blood (as occurs in shock); or has analteration in the brain's chemistry.

[5]

Metabolic disorders such as diabetes mellitus and uremia can alterconsciousness.

[12]

Hypo- or hypernatremia (decreased and elevated levels of sodium, respectively) as well asdehydration can also produce an altered LOC.

[13]

A pH outside of the range the brain can tolerate will also alterLOC.

[10]

Exposure to drugs (e.g. alcohol) or toxins may also lower LOC,

[5]

as may a core temperature that is toohigh or too low (hyperthermia or hypothermia). Increases in intracranial pressure (the pressure within the skull) canalso cause altered LOC. It can result from traumatic brain injury such as concussion.

[12]

Stroke and intracranialhemorrhage are other causes.

[12]

Infections of the central nervous system may also be associated with decreasedLOC; for example, an altered LOC is the most common symptom of encephalitis.

[14]

Neoplasms within theintracranial cavity can also affect consciousness,

[12]

as can epilepsy and post-seizure states.

[10]

A decreased LOC canalso result from a combination of factors.

[12]

A concussion, which is a mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) may resultin decreased LOC.

Pathophysiology

Although the neural science behind alertness, wakefulness, and arousal are not fully known, the reticular formation isknown to play a role in these.

[10]

The ascending reticular activating system is a postulated group of neuralconnections that receives sensory input and projects to the cerebral cortex through the midbrain and thalamus fromthe retucular formation.

[10]

Since this system is thought to modulate wakefulness and sleep, interference with it, suchas injury, illness, or metabolic disturbances, could alter the level of consciousness.

[10]

Normally, stupor and coma are produced by interference with the brain stem, such as can be caused by a lesion orindirect effects, such as brain herniation.

[10]

Mass lesions in the brain stem normally cause coma due to their effectson the reticular formation.

[15]

Mass lesions that occur above the tentorium cerebelli (pictured) normally do notsignificantly alter the level of consciousness unless they are very large or affect both cerebral hemispheres.

[10]

Diagnostic approach

Assessing LOC involves determining an individual's response to external stimuli.

[12]

Speed and accuracy of responses to questions and reactions to stimuli such as touch and pain are noted.

[12]

Reflexes, such as the cough andgag reflexes, are also means of judging LOC.

[12]

Once the level of consciousness is determined, clinicians seek cluesfor the cause of any alteration.

[10]

Usually the first tests in the ER are pulse oximetry to determine if there is hypoxia,serum glucose levels to rule out hypoglycemia. A urine drug screen may be sent. A CT head is very important toobtain to rule out bleed. In case, meningitis is suspected, a lumbar puncture must be performed. A serum TSH is animportant test to order. In select groups consider vitamin B12 levels. Checking serum ammonia is not advised.

Level of consciousness274

Treatment

Treatment depends on the degree of decrease in consciousness and its underlying cause. Initial treatment ofteninvolves the administration of dextrose if the blood sugar is low as well as the administration of naloxone andthiamine.

References

[1]http://apps.

who.

int/classifications/icd10/browse/2010/en#/R40[2]http://www.

icd9data.

com/getICD9Code.

ashx?icd9=780.

0[3]Kandel ER, Jessell, Thomas M.; Schwartz, James H. (2000).

Principles of neural science

(http://books.

google.

com/ books?id=yzEFK7Xc87YC&pg=PA901&dq="level+of+consciousness"&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U3cQPvmVUv1WBpAY0q1VwCNncmCEg). New York: McGraw-Hill. pp. 901. ISBN 0-8385-7701-6. . Retrieved 2008-07-03.[4]Porth C (2007).

Essentials of Pahtophysiology: Concepts of Altered Health States

(http://books.

google.

com/books?id=57RQC-3OPtUC&pg=PT858&dq="level+of+consciousness"&lr=&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U2GKFnXp7RoiMFDHEcfjOvzPc42wA). Hagerstown,MD: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. pp. 835. ISBN 0-7817-7087-4. . Retrieved 2008-07-03.[5]Pollak AN, Gupton CL (2002).

Emergency Care and Transportation of the Sick and Injured

(http://books.

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com/ books?id=xAPuKkKA6FEC&pg=PT177&dq="level+of+consciousness"&lr=&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U1I-M4FEBUK26mGD0CTUQZivFL0bg). Boston: Jones and Bartlett. pp. 140. ISBN 0-7637-1666-9. . Retrieved 2008-07-04.[6]Porth, p. 838[7]Scheld

et al.

. p. 530[8]Forgey WW (1999).

Wilderness Medicine, Beyond First Aid, 5th Edition

(http://books.

google.

com/books?id=UNwzDUy9AlsC&pg=PA13&dq="level+of+consciousness"&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U0hVgy-07KsHzRljR6VPEnh-_GUkg). Guilford, Conn: GlobePequot. pp. 13. ISBN 0-7627-0490-X. . Retrieved 2008-07-04.[9]Kruse MJ (1986).

Nursing the Neurological and Neurotrauma Patient

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–

58. ISBN 0-8476-7451-7. .[10]Tindall SC (1990). "Level of consciousness" (http://www.ncbi.nlm.

nih.gov/bookshelf/br.

fcgi?book=cm&partid=380). In Walker HK,Hall WD, Hurst JW.

Clinical Methods: The History, Physical, and Laboratory Examinations

. Butterworth Publishers. . Retrieved 2008-07-04.[11]Posner JB, Saper CB, Schiff ND, Plum F (2007).

Plum and Posner's Diagnosis of Stupor and Coma

. Oxford University Press, USA. pp. 41.ISBN 0-19-532131-6.[12]von Koch CS, Hoff JT (2005). "Diagnosis and management of depressed states of consciousness" (http://books.

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com/ books?id=c3I-PFkMN2YC&pg=PA863&dq="level+of+consciousness"&lr=&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U084SW9323Y0i399lPQxCu2AeJlBw). In Doherty GM.

Current Surgical Diagnosis and Treatment

. McGraw-Hill Medical.pp. 863. ISBN 0-07-142315-X. . Retrieved 2008-07-04.[13]Johnson AF, Jacobson BH (1998).

Medical Speech-language Pathology: A Practitioner's Guide

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Infections of the Central Nervous System

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nih.gov/bookshelf/br.

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Clinical Methods: The History, Physical, and Laboratory Examinations

. Butterworth Publishers. . Retrieved 2008-07-04."Mass lesions within the brainstem produce coma by virtue of direct effects on the reticular formation"

Metaphysical naturalism275

Metaphysical naturalism

, also called

ontological naturalism

and

philosophical naturalism

, or just naturalism, isa philosophical worldview and belief system that holds that there is nothing but natural elements, principles, andrelations of the kind studied by the natural sciences, i.e., those required to understand our physical environment bymathematical modeling. Methodological naturalism however, refers exclusively to the methodology of science, forwhich metaphysical naturalism provides only one possible ontological foundation.Metaphysical naturalism holds that all properties related to consciousness and the mind are reducible to, orsupervene upon, nature. Broadly, the corresponding theological perspective is religious naturalism or spiritualnaturalism. More specifically, it rejects the supernatural concepts and explanations that are part of many religions.

Definition

Metaphysical naturalism is a philosophy that maintains that:•Nature encompasses all that exists throughout space and time.•Nature (the universe or cosmos) consists only of natural elements, that is, of spatiotemporal physicalsubstance

—

mass

–

energy. Non-physical or quasi-physical substance, such as information, ideas, values, logic,mathematics, intellect, and other emergent phenomena, either supervene upon the physical or can be reduced to aphysical account.•Nature operates by the laws of physics. Science is the primary means of discovering these laws.•The supernatural does not exist, i.e., only nature is real.Naturalism is therefore a metaphysical philosophy opposed primarily by Biblical creationism."

[1]

Philosophers view naturalism as a positive term so few dare to announce themselves as non-naturalists. Thereligiously inclined philosophers tend to be indifferent toward metaphysical naturalism. Philosophers who are moreapathetic toward metaphysical naturalism prefer to understand it in a nonrestrictive way in order not to disqualifythemselves as naturalists. Those who are keen on metaphysical naturalist doctrines are happy to set the bar fornaturalism higher.

[2]

Metaphysical naturalism is a philosophy "wherein worship is replaced with curiosity, devotion with diligence,holiness with sincerity, ritual with study, and scripture with the whole world and the whole of human learning," andit is the naturalist

’

s duty "to question all things and have a well grounded faith in what is well-investigated andwell-proved, rather than what is merely well-asserted or well-liked."

[3]

"It is presumably not a religion. In one veryimportant respect, however, it resembles religion: it can be said to perform the cognitive function of a religion. Thereis that range of deep human questions to which a religion typically provides an answer: ... Like a typical religion,naturalism gives a set of answers to these and similar questions."

[4]

Metaphysical naturalism is an approach to metaphysics or ontology, which deals with existence

per se

. It should notbe confused with methodological naturalism, which sees empiricism as the basis for the scientific method.Immaterial entities can occur in a rational worldview (such as that of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Newton or Darwin)which are deduced from empirical data and seen as integral to a complete understanding of natural operations.Metaphysical naturalism regards nature as all that exists or can exist, and assumes that events in nature areexplainable by empirically observable causes. However, various abstractions, such as numbers, are considered to beimmaterial for practical purposes. (See Mathematical Platonism).

Metaphysical naturalism276

Epistemology

Some have charged that this focus on science is really a form of scientism.

[5]

However, other fields besides science(e.g., history) sometimes find acceptance with metaphysical naturalists.

[6]

Metaphysical naturalism is an approach to metaphysics or ontology. These subjects deal with existence

per se

.Metaphysical naturalism is sometimes confused with methodological naturalism.

[7]

Science and metaphysical naturalism

The philosophy of naturalism is necessary for science to take place.

[8]

Methodological naturalism is "the adoption orassumption of philosophical naturalism within scientific method with or without fully accepting or believing it ...science is not metaphysical and does not depend on the ultimate truth of any metaphysics for its success (althoughscience does have metaphysical implications), but methodological naturalism must be adopted as a strategy orworking hypothesis for science to succeed. We may therefore be agnostic about the ultimate truth of naturalism, butmust nevertheless adopt it and investigate nature as if nature is all that there is."

[9]

Metaphysical naturalism providesbasic philosophical assumptions required to do the scientific method

[10]

- namely, that reality is objective andconsistent, that humans have the capacity to perceive reality accurately, and that rational explanations exist forelements of the real world.

[11]

Variously known as background independence, the cosmological principle, theprinciple of universality, the principle of uniformity, or uniformitarianism, these are important philosophicalassumptions derived from naturalism

[12]

[13]

[14]

and natural processes

[15]

across time and space--are needed forscientists to extrapolate into the unobservable past.

[16]

[17]

The mind is caused by natural phenomena

What all metaphysical naturalists agree on, however, is that the fundamental constituents of reality, from whicheverything derives and upon which everything depends, are fundamentally mindless. So if any variety of metaphysical naturalism is true, any mental properties that exist (hence any mental powers or beings) are causallyderived from, and ontologically dependent on, systems of nonmental properties, powers, or things. This meansmetaphysical naturalism would be false if any distinctly mental property, power, or entity exists that is notontologically dependent on some arrangement of nonmental things, or that is not causally derived from somearrangement of nonmental things, or that has causal effects without the involvement of any arrangement of nonmental things that is already causally sufficient to produce that effect.

[18]

[19]

Absolute vs. Contingent methodological naturalism

The relationship between metaphysical and methodological naturalism varies among thinkers. To understand, twovarieties of methodological naturalism should be distinguished.

Absolute methodological naturalism

is the view thatit is in some sense impossible for any empirical method to discover supernatural facts, even if there are some. [Thisis compatible with (but does not entail) the view that something other than empirical methods might be able todiscover supernatural facts.]

Contingent methodological naturalism

entails the belief that, judging from pastexperience, empirical methods are far more likely to uncover natural facts than supernatural ones. It is generallycounterproductive, but not impossible, to pursue supernatural hypotheses empirically. Thus not all methodologicalnaturalists are metaphysical naturalists. It is also possible to be a methodological naturalist in natural science, buthold that other rational methods can demonstrate spiritual realities such as God or souls.

Metaphysical naturalism277

Common beliefs

Contemporary naturalists possess a wide diversity of beliefs and engage each other in healthy debate anddisagreement on many issues. However, besides the basic beliefs already described above, most if not allcontemporary naturalists believe the following as the logical consequences of the core beliefs of naturalism. Theseform the basis for the naturalistic interpretation of science.

Undesigned universe

Naturalists argue that the universe has either always existed or had a purely natural origin, being neither created nordesigned. It has been asserted that the Big Bang cosmology was developed within this assumption, proposing that theobservable universe had a beginning, unfolding from a process of natural laws. In fact, it was championed by aBelgian Catholic priest, Georges Lemaître and criticized by naturalists for being "too Biblical." Some naturalistspropose a multiverse theory, where it is thought that the observable universe is only part of a much larger whole.Citing the first law of thermodynamics, other naturalists propose that matter has always existed; matter, not theuniverse in its current state, exists eternally.

[20]

Deep Time

The concept of time as associated with the existence of a universe or universes is known as Deep Time. Itsmeasurement is conceived in billions of earth years. As an indispensable part of the Cosmos, deep time is anaccepted fact, not a hypothesis. "By recognizing the vastness of Earth history compared to human history, weinternalize what John McPhee has termed Deep Time"

[21]

Abiogenesis

Since matter is all there is, and since there was once no life and now there is, and since there are no creative gods,then abiogenesis (life arising from inorganic compounds through natural causes) must have happened. There areseveral current hypotheses about how abiogenesis happened, none of which question if it happened. As thepreconditions of abiogenesis currently appear to be statistically rare in the universe, some naturalists argue thathumanity's existence is therefore seen as lucky rather than planned or intended.

[22]

[23]

Evolution

Since there were once only simple life forms and now there is a rich diversity of life on Earth and since there are nosupernatural gods, evolution by natural selection or other means is a fact. Naturalists hypothesize about how, not if evolution happened. They maintain that humanity's existence as rational animals is not by intelligent design butrather a natural process of emergence. Whereas naturalists do not interpret evolution as purpose driven, many see nocompelling argument against ethical naturalism. (See Value of society below).

[24]

Mind as brain

Metaphysical naturalists believe there exists no soul or spirit which constitutes the mind. If one's mind, and henceone's identity and existence as a person, is entirely the product of a physical process, three conclusions follow. First,all mental contents (such as ideas, theories, emotions, moral and personal values, or beauty and ugliness) exist solelyas computational constructions of a brain, and not as things that exist independently of conscious thought. Second,damage to the brain (from disease, drugs, malnutrition, or injury) frequently entails damage to the self and thereforeshould be of great concern. Third, the death or destruction of one's brain cannot be survived, and therefore allhumans are mortal. Stace, however, holds that work on ecstatic mysticism calls into question the underlyingassumption of this argument, that awareness is not possible without data processing.

[25]

Metaphysical naturalism278

Utility of reason

Metaphysical naturalists hold that reason is the refinement and improvement of naturally evolved faculties, throughdiscovering, then learning, and then employing methods and procedures that are found to increase the frequency withwhich one arrives at true conclusions and correct information about oneself and the universe. The certitude of deductive logic remains unexplained by this essentially probabilistic view (see philosopher Alvin Plantinga'sevolutionary argument against naturalism), leading many mathematicians to espouse some from of Platonistidealism. Nevertheless, naturalists believe that reason is superior to all the other tools available in ascertaining thetruth, so anyone who wishes to have more beliefs that are true than are false should seek to perfect and consistentlyemploy their reason in testing and forming beliefs. One outcome of this principle has been the discovery thatempirical methods (especially those of proven use in the sciences) are unsurpassed for discovering the facts of reality, while methods of pure reason alone can securely discover only truths inherent in concepts and systems of ideas.

[26]

Value of society

Humans evolved as social animals, which is the only reason humanity has developed culture and civilization, andnow in fact depends on them. This means that even in the neutral terms of differential reproductive success,humanity's future as a species depends on developing and maintaining a healthy and productive culture andcivilization. Any behavior contrary to that end threatens humanity's survival and the survival of one's neighbors, kin,and descendants. Naturalists believe this means humans have been "designed" by blind natural forces to require ahealthy society in order to flourish and feel happy and content. Therefore the pursuit of human happiness requires thepursuit of a healthy society so people can live in it, interact with it, and benefit from it.

History

Ancient period

Metaphysical naturalism appears to have originated in early Greek philosophy. The earliest presocratic philosophers,such as Thales, Anaxagoras or especially the atomist Democritus, were labeled by their peers and successors "the

physikoi

" (from the Greek φυσικός or

physikos

, meaning "natural philosopher," borrowing on the word φύσις or

physis

, meaning "nature") because they investigated natural causes, often excluding any role for gods in the creationor operation of the world. This eventually led to fully developed systems such as Epicureanism, which sought toexplain everything that exists as the product of atoms falling and swerving in a void.In their definition of nature, the ancient Greeks distinguished "nature" from "artifice." Anything that resulted fromthe innate properties of a thing was regarded as having a natural cause, regardless of whether those propertiesthemselves were intelligently arranged or not, while anything that resulted from human action was regarded ashaving an artificial cause. Thus, natural causes were distinguished from human intelligent causes. It was oftenassumed that some intelligent causes were primary causes and not solely the product of natural properties, but noteveryone agreed. Following the

physikoi

and their successors, some ancients denied the existence of any intelligentcauses that were not entirely the product of natural causes (thus reducing all intelligent causes to natural causes), andthey are the earliest metaphysical naturalists. However, only a few Greek and Romans embraced such a view. Of these Epicurus and Strato of Lampsacus were the most famous.Metaphysical naturalism is most notably a Western phenomenon, but an equivalent idea has long existed in the East.Though unnamed and never articulated into a coherent system, one tradition within Confucian philosophy embraceda view that can be called metaphysical naturalism, dating back at least to Wang Chong in the 1st century, if notearlier. But this tradition arose independently and had little influence on the development of modern naturalistphilosophy or on Eastern or Western culture.

Metaphysical naturalism279

Middle ages to modernity

With the rise and dominance of Christianity in the West and the later spread of Islam, metaphysical naturalism wasgenerally abandoned by intellectuals. Thus, there is little evidence for it in the Middle Ages. The reintroduction of Aristotle's empirical epistemology as well as previously lost treatises by Greco-Roman natural philosophers duringthe Renaissance contributed to Scientific Revolution which was begun by the medieval Scholastics without resultingin any noticeable increase in commitment to naturalism. It was not until the early modern era and Age of Enlightenment that naturalism, like that of Benedict Spinoza, David Hume, Denis Diderot, Julien La Mettrie, andBaron d'Holbach, among others, started to emerge again in the 17th and 18th centuries.In this period, some metaphysical naturalists adhered to a distinct doctrine, materialism, which became the onlycategory of metaphysical naturalism widelydefended until the 20th century, when advances in physics resulted in widespread abandonment of prior formulations of materialism. 19th century physics added electromagnetic forcefields, and in the 20th century matter was found to be a form of energy and therefore not fundamental as materialistshad assumed. (See History of physics.) In philosophy, renewed attention to the problem of universals, philosophy of mathematics, the development of mathematical logic, and the post-positivist revival of metaphysics and thephilosophy of religion, initially by way of Wittgensteinian linguistic philosophy, further called the naturalisticparadigm into question. Developments such as these, along with those within science and the philosophy of sciencebrought new advancements and revisions of naturalistic doctrines by naturalistic philosophers into metaphysics,ethics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, epistemology, etc., the products of which includephysicalism and eliminative materialism, supervenience, causal theories of reference, anomalous monism,naturalized epistemology (e.g. reliabilism), internalism and externalism, ethical naturalism, and property dualism, forexample.Current naturalism derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. Naturalists John Dewey,Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook, and Roy Wood Sellars worked to ally philosophy more closely with science. Theypromoted the ideas that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing

‘

supernatural

’

and that the scientificmethod should be used to investigate all areas of reality.

[27]

Currently, metaphysical naturalism is more widely embraced than in previous centuries, especially but notexclusively in the natural sciences and the Anglo-American, analytic philosophical communities. While the vastmajority of the population of the world remains firmly committed to non-naturalistic worldviews, prominentcontemporary defenders of naturalism and/or naturalistic theses and doctrines today include J. J. C. Smart, DavidMalet Armstrong, David Papineau, Paul Kurtz, Brian Leiter, Daniel Dennett, Michael Devitt, Fred Dretske, Paul andPatricia Churchland, Mario Bunge, Jonathan Schaffer, Hilary Kornblith, Quentin Smith, Paul Draper, MichaelMartin, among many other academic philosophers.

Marxism, Objectivism, and secular humanism

A number of politicized versions of naturalism have arisen in the Western world, most notably Marxism in the 19thcentury and Randian Objectivism in the 20th century. Marxism is an expression of communist or socialist idealismwithin a naturalistic framework, while Objectivism extols the virtues of liberal individualism, an expression of capitalist idealism within a naturalist framework. Most proponents of metaphysical naturalism in First Worldcountries, however, are neither Marxists nor Objectivists, and instead embrace the more moderate political ideals of secular humanism or cultural moral relativism.

Metaphysical naturalism280

Arguments for metaphysical naturalism

There are many arguments for belief in metaphysical naturalism. Only a few will be surveyed here, and only in brief.There are many others, but most involve refinements, variants or sub-arguments to the following.

Argument from precedent

For over three hundred years empirical methods have consistently discovered only natural things and causes, evenunderlying many things once thought to be supernatural. Meanwhile, no other methods have produced any consistentconclusions about the substance or causes of anything, much less anything supernatural. The logical inference is thatsince countless past gaps in knowledge have been filled by naturalism, and by nothing else, probably all remaininggaps in knowledge will be filled by naturalism as well. This simply extends a principle fundamental to science as awhole, that we should presume any new phenomenon obeys known laws of physics until we have empirically provenotherwise. Hence we should presume that any unexplained fact has a natural explanation until we have empiricallyproven otherwise. Therefore, since we have not found empirical proof of anything supernatural, and since we haveabundant reason from past precedent to expect that natural explanations underlie everything, metaphysicalnaturalism is most probably true.There are two unanswered objections to this argument. The first is that empirical methods restrict human experienceto what is external and measurable without showing that only what is external and measurable exists. The argumentis thus founded on an anti-empirical,

a priori

rejection of entire areas of human experience. The second is that in pastapplications of physics, what was to be explained was empirically measurable, whereas what naturalists claim can beexplained by physics (intentions, awareness as opposed or data processing, God) are not empirically measurable andphysics has never claimed that it is applicable to them. It must be recalled that physics uses abstractions, and thatabstractions necessarily abstract from some data in order to focus on other data. Methods are not automaticallyapplicable until empirically proven otherwise, but have conditions of applicability which must be met in advance of applying them. For example, no amount of empirical data will ever show that 2 + 2 = 4 always and everywhere.

Argument to naturalism as best explanation

Some naturalists argue that sound naturalist hypotheses about facts still scientifically unexplained outperform allother hypotheses in explanatory scope and power, relative to explanatory simplicity. If that's true, then metaphysicalnaturalism is the best explanation of everything we observe and experience, and is therefore probably true. Thisamounts to arguing that everything makes more sense if naturalism is true, many details about ourselves and theworld are more probable if naturalism is true, and to explain even the most mysterious of facts naturalism has toresort to fewer ad hoc assumptions than any known alternative. For example, resorting to the supernatural asexplanation typically requires an array of completely ad hoc assumptions about the abilities, nature, limitations, anddesires of supernatural forces. Even so, much of what remains unexplained is then elucidated as simply the"mystery" of the enigmatic will of the supernatural or as beyond human ken. Naturalism, on the other hand, reliesmuch more heavily on assumptions already scientifically established as precedents and principles, and makes morespecific predictions about what the observed results would be if naturalism were true, which align very well withactual observations.This argument assumes that the hypothetico-deductive method is the only way to truth. Furthermore, this argumentdoes draw an equivalence between methodological naturalism which focuses on epistemology with ontologicalnaturalism which focuses on metaphysics. Whilst methodological naturalism has produced great success inexplaining observed phenomena by testing hypotheses according to natural laws, this does not preclude on a priorigrounds the possibility of supernatural phenomena existing within the universe. In addition, if something purportedto be "supernatural" was confirmed by scientific observations, naturalists would discount these as anomalies orunexplained natural events. Empiricists place experience above theory, but naturalists reject whole classes of databased on an

a priori

ontological theory. Natural philosophers, from Aristotle on, have claimed that the facts of

Metaphysical naturalism281experience are adequate to

deduce

the existence of the metaphysical, not as hypothesis, but as a rational certaintyentailed by observable facts. Regarding theology, a subject that Aristotle considered to be within the scope of Natural science or

Physics

, he observed that merely requiring one of something is, in general, a more parsimoniousexplanation than requiring many. However, not unlike later physicists, he was trying to explain the eternal circularmotion of the planets and stars by reason of one or more instances of an unchanging principle. In a morerecognizably theological argument, Thomas Aquinas reasoned deductively for additional properties thatcharacterized a creator God.

Argument from absence

One major way in which naturalism is claimed to explain things better than alternatives is that if the supernaturalexists (whether as gods, powers, or spirits), it is so silent and inert that its effects are almost never observed, despitevast and extensive searching. Even the relatively few alleged observations take place only under dubious conditionslacking in sound empirical controls or tests, and on those occasions when they are subsequently subjected to soundcontrols or tests, they turn out to be false. Our inability to uncover clear evidence of anything supernatural issomewhat improbable if anything supernatural exists, but very probable if nothing supernatural exists, and thereforemetaphysical naturalism is probably true.This argument is met by the case built by theists such as Aristotle, Ibn Sina, and Aquinas that the entire natural worldis an effect of and evidence for the Existence of God. If this argument is to be made, it should include a refutation of arguments purporting to show that all of nature is evidence.

Argument from physical minds

Neuroscientists have accumulated vast evidence that the functions and activities of the human mind correspond tothe functions and activities of the human brain, which is constructed from different interacting physical systems thatevolved over time through the animal kingdom. Our brains are now the most complex machines found anywhere innature, and our minds appear limited to our brain's physical needs and capabilities. We have discovered no clearevidence of any other kind of mind, no clear evidence that our minds can exceed the limitations of our physicalbrain, and no clear evidence that all of the structures and functions of the brain did not slowly evolve through billionsof years of undirected mutation and indifferent natural selection. This is the only way we would observe the facts tobe if naturalism were true (since there is no other way to have a mind on naturalism

except

as the product of a slowlyevolved, highly complex physical system like our brain), but if supernatural entities or processes exist (and someminds or mental content exist independently of a physical machine, like our brain), then what we observe is not theonly way things could be (since by now we could have and likely would have observed some supernatural elementsof our own or other minds or observed mental powers in other objects). Since this observation is less probable if supernaturalism is true, metaphysical naturalism is more likely to be true.This argument presupposes that the mind consists of data processing only, which is what has been investigated andshown to be possible in physical systems such as computers. However, we know that most data processing in thebrain occurs absent awareness, so it is fallacious to assume that awareness is a side effect of data processing. Sincethe primary function of the mind is to know, and knowing requires awareness of the known contents, naturalism hasnot provided an explanation of mind, but only of its data processing subsystem. If that subsystem is traumatized,what we are aware of may be defective, but that does not show that the existence of subjective awareness is aconsequent of data processing.

Metaphysical naturalism282

Cosmological argument for naturalism

If naturalism is true, then the formation of intelligent life

via

natural processes in any one given small corner of ayoung universe is unlikely. Therefore, the only way we would observe life to exist if naturalism were true, is if theuniverse were old enough and of sufficient size that events of such an improbability would be very rare but stilllikely to occur. We observe the universe to be immensely old and large with life that is, as far as our observationsallow, very rare. In addition, the universe is almost entirely lethal to life. By far most of what exists is a deadlyradiation-filled vacuum, and by far most matter in the cosmos composes lethal environments like stars and blackholes. Insofar as supernaturalism allows other possible arrangements for us to observe, such as universes moreuniversally hospitable to life, universes far too young or small to produce life by mechanical accident, or universes inwhich life is far more common, what we observe to be the case is less probable given supernaturalism than givennaturalism; therefore, metaphysical naturalism is more likely to be true.

Criticisms

It seems difficult to see how this argument supports naturalism. Naturalism does not, in itself,

predict

that theuniverse is old, nor does theism necessarily predict that it is young. If the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe were such that intelligent life evolved quickly, naturalists would still explain that observation by laws of nature and assume that those laws are independent of a deity. Similarly, theists can argue that the plan of theirdeity(ies) is such that our existence be a consequence of the actual laws and initial conditions.

Arguments against metaphysical naturalism

Metaphysical naturalism has been criticized by many, particularly by specific religious communities. Somearguments against metaphysical naturalism are surveyed below.

Evolutionary argument against metaphysical naturalism

Alvin Plantinga, a contemporary philosopher of epistemology at Notre Dame, has argued that anyone who holds tothe truth of both metaphysical naturalism and evolution is inherently irrational in doing so. His argument relies onestablishing that the probability that unguided evolution would have produced reliable cognitive faculties is eitherlow or inscrutable. For example, imagine a hunter who very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees atiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely that the tiger he sees will eat him.This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of truebelief. If this argument holds, one who holds both naturalism and evolution acquires a

“

defeater

”

for every belief heholds, including the beliefs associated with naturalism and evolution.

[28]

Since its inception, Plantinga's argument has been criticized by many naturalist philosophers. Mental philosopherDaniel Dennett and historian Richard Carrier have attacked it on the grounds of misunderstanding natural selection.They argue in their respective works that nature selects the genes of organisms that survive longer. Since patternseeking in any multitude offer a substantial survival advantage, nature can effectively breed a cognitive apparatus fortruth-finding. For example, primitive men that understood fertilizing plants and that flint makes fire would livelonger because of their reasoning skills. This would allow them to pass reasoning abilities to their offspring. Out of this second generation, the offspring with the best rational faculties would live the longest because they discoveredeven more true patterns. Thus natural selection would continue to fine-tune man's truth seeking skills over time.

[29]

Metaphysical naturalism283

Argument from design

Recently popular is the claim that certain structures in evolved organisms are too complex to have evolved by naturalselection and can only be explained as the result of intelligent design. This argument suggests that certain biologicalinstances (the favorite example being the eye) could not have occurred gradually, but must have come to beinstantaneously. This is referred to as the argument from irreducible complexity.A cosmologically-based argument, fine-tuning, states that the fundamental constants of physics and laws of natureappear so finely tuned to permit life that only the existence of a supernatural designer could explain them.However, this has been asserted by many naturalists, like Victor Stenger, to be a god of the gaps argument because itcreates a problem, says it is unanswerable, then fills in God as the solution. He also accuses fine-tuning as being astatistics fallacy, because it asserts after the fact what the chances were before the big bang. This fallacy makes itappear as though it was purposeful, because humans observe the after effect when it was just as likely to have anyother combination that did not permit life.It is also argued by Lawrence Krauss and Neil DeGrasse Tyson that the universe is not fine-tuned and is veryunfriendly to life with only a small percentage of the universe being habitable. They argue life evolves to theconditions of the universe through natural selection, not the other way around.A related approach which is consistent with existing science is that of physicist-philosopher Dennis Polis. He grantsall of the science advanced by naturalists to support their case and shows it entails both the existence of God and ateleological view of nature.

[30]

Naturalist simply project data into a solely mechanistic conceptual space, when thesame data can be more adequately represented by a conceptual space in which mechanism and teleology are seen ascomplimentary.

Argument from consciousness

Since neuroscience has yet to explain the qualitative nature of conscious experience and its elements, commonlycalled qualia, some argue that naturalism is therefore refuted or should not be believed (

see

hard problem of consciousness). Proponents of this argument suggest that naturalism's lack of a satisfying explanation on this matteris not a result of a simple lack of research (which would indicate that science may one day explain qualia), but thatnaturalism cannot explain qualia because no valid physical explanation exists in principle. One response bynaturalists is to maintain that, while conscious experience exists, qualia do not. Yet another is to claim that thisdenial of a possible physical explanation has not been rationally demonstrated or factually grounded, but is anargument from personal incredulity and there is no reason to think that the mystery of consciousness is inherentlyunsolvable, that the apparent gulf between objectivity and subjectivity is unbridgeable, and that no sufficientreductionistic explanation can be offered.A more decisive, semiotic argument is that naturalistic accounts of mind rely on the notion of instrumental signs,which are different in nature from the formal signs used in the mind, and furthermore, that instrumental signs requireformal signs to operate as signs at all.

[31]

Metaphysical naturalism284

Further reading

Historical overview

•Edward B. Davis and Robin Collins, "Scientific Naturalism." In

Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction,

ed. Gary B. Ferngren, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, pp. 322

–

34.

Pro

•Gary Drescher,

Good and Real

, The MIT Press, 2006. [ISBN 0-262-04233-9]•David Malet Armstrong,

A World of States of Affairs

, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. [ISBN0-521-58064-1]•Mario Bunge, 2006,

Chasing Reality: Strife over Realism

, University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-9075-3 and2001,

Scientific Realism: Selected Essays of Mario Bunge

, Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-892-5•Richard Carrier, 2005, Sense and Goodness without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism, AuthorHouse.ISBN 1-4208-0293-3•Mario De Caro & David Macarthur (eds), 2004.

Naturalism in Question

. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UniversityPress. ISBN 0-674-01295-X•Daniel Dennett, 2003,

Freedom Evolves

, Penguin. ISBN 0-14-200384-0 and 2006•Andrew Melnyk, 2003,

A Physicalist Manifesto: Thoroughly Modern Materialism

, Cambridge University Press.ISBN 0-521-82711-6•David Mills, 2004,

Atheist Universe: Why God Didn't Have A Thing To Do With It

, Xlibris. ISBN 1-4134-3481-9•Jeffrey Poland, 1994,

Physicalism: The Philosophical Foundations

, Oxford University Press. ISBN0-19-824980-2

Con

•James Beilby, ed., 2002,

Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

, Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-8763-3•William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland, eds., 2000,

Naturalism: A Critical Analysis

, Routledge. ISBN0-415-23524-3•Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro, 2008,

Naturalism

, Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8028-0768-7•Phillip E. Johnson, 1998,

Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law & Education

,InterVarsity Press. ISBN 0-8308-1929-0 and 2002,

The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism

,InterVarsity Press. ISBN 0-8308-2395-6•C.S. Lewis, ed., 1996, "Miracles", Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-065301-9•Michael Rea, 2004,

World without Design: The Ontological Consequences of Naturalism

, Oxford UniversityPress. ISBN 0-19-924761-7•Victor Reppert, 2003,

C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason

, InterVarsity Press.ISBN 0-8308-2732-3•Mark Steiner, 2002,

The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem

, Harvard University Press.ISBN 0-674-00970-3

Metaphysical naturalism285

Notes

[1]Schafersman 1996.[2]Papineau 2007.[3]Carrier 2005, p. 26[4]Plantinga, Alvin. "Religion and Science" (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-science/). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. .Retrieved 3 November 2010.[5]Rea, Michael (2002).

World Without Design: The Ontological Consequences of Naturalism

. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199247609.[6]Clark, Tom W. Epistemology (http://www.

naturalism.org/epistemology.

htm), "Reality and its Rivals", Retrieved 2009-11-26 (self published)[7]Naturalism (http://plato.

stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Retrieved 2009-11-30[8]"Since philosophy is at least implicitly at the core of every decision we make or position we take, it is obvious that correct philosophy is anecessity for scientific inquiry to take place." (A. 2000)[9]"while science as a process only requires methodological naturalism, I think that the assumption of methodological naturalism by scientistsand others logically and morally entails ontological naturalism." "I maintain that the practice or adoption of methodological naturalism entailsa logical and moral belief in ontological naturalism, so they are not logically decoupled." (Schafersman)[10]"naturalism is the "fundamental assumption" espoused by science." (Strahler 1992, p. 3)[11]A. 2000[12]"You cannot go to a rocky outcrop and observe either the constancy of nature's laws or the working of unknown processes. It works theother way around." You first assume these propositions and "then you go to the out crop of rock." (Gould 1987, p. 120)[13]Gould 1987, p. 119[14]"The assumption of spatial and temporal invariance of natural laws is by no means unique to geology since it amounts to a warrant forinductive inference which, as Bacon showed nearly four hundred years ago, is the basic mode of reasoning in empirical science. Withoutassuming this spatial and temporal invariance, we have no basis for extrapolating from the known to the unknown and, therefore, no way of reaching general conclusions from a finite number of observations. (Since the assumption is itself vindicated by induction, it can in no way

“

prove

”

the validity of induction - an endeavor virtually abandoned after Hume demonstrated its futility two centuries ago)." (Gould 1965,pp. 223

–

228)[15]Lyell's

“

uniformity of process

”

is an assumption:

“

As such, it is another

a priori

assumption shared by all scientists and not a statement aboutthe empirical world.

”

(Gould 1984, p. 11)[16]"Uniformity is an unprovable postulate justified, or indeed required, on two grounds. First, nothing in our incomplete but extensiveknowledge of history disagrees with it. Second, only with this postulate is a rational interpretation of history possible, and we are justified inseeking

—

as scientists we must seek

—

such a rational interpretation." Simpson 1963, pp. 24

–

48[17]"The principle of uniformity is not a law, not a rule established after comparison of facts, but a principle, preceding the observation of facts .. . It is the logical principle of parsimony of causes and of economy of scientific notions. By explaining past changes by analogy with presentphenomena, a limit is set to conjecture, for there is only one way in which two things are equal, but there are an infinity of ways in which theycould be supposed different." Hooykaas 1963, p. 38[18]Richard Carrier, On Defining Naturalism as a Worldview (http://www.secularhumanism.

org/index.

php?section=library&page=carrier_30_3),

Free Inquiry

30.3 (April/May 2010), pp. 50-51.[19]Carrier 2005, pp. 211

–

212[20]Carrier 2005, pp. 71

–

95[21]Palmer, A. R.; E-an Zen. "The Context of Humanity: Understanding Deep Time" (http://bcn.

boulder.

co.

us/basin/local/sustain2.

htm). .Retrieved 19 January 2009.[22]Carrier 2005, pp. 166

–

68[23]Richard Carrier, [The Argument from Biogenesis: Probabilities Against a Natural Origin of Life],

Biology and Philosophy

19.5 (November2004), pp. 739-64.[24]Carrier 2005, pp. 168

–

176, 326

–

327[25]Stace, W.T, Mysticism and Philosophy. N.Y.: Macmillan Pr., 1960; reprinted, Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1987.[26]Carrier 2005, pp. 53

–

54[27]Papineau 2007[28]http://www.

calvin.

edu/academic/philosophy/virtual_library/articles/plantinga_alvin/an_evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism.pdf [29]Carrier 2005, pp. 181

–

188[30]Polis, Dennis F., Mind or Randomness in Evolution (http://xianphil.

org/Intent_evol.

htm),

Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

(forthcoming, 2010)[31]Polis, Dennis F., "Semiotics" (http://xianphil.org/semiotics.html)

Metaphysical naturalism286

References

Books•Audi, Robert (1996). "Naturalism". In Borchert, Donald M..

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Supplement

. USA:Macmillan Reference. pp. 372

–

374.•Carrier, Richard (2005).

Sense and Goodness without God: A defense of Metaphysical Naturalism

. AuthorHouse.pp. 444. ISBN 1420802933.•Gould, Stephen J. (1984). "Toward the v8indication of punctuational change in catastrophes and earth history". InBergren, W. A.; Van Couvering, J. A..

Catastrophes and Earth History

. Princeton, New Jersey: PrincetonUniversity Press.•Gould, Stephen J. (1987).

Time

’

s Arrow, Time

’

s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time

.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 119.•Danto, Arthur C. (1967). "Naturalism". In Edwords, Paul.

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy

. New York: TheMacmillan Co. and The Free Press. pp. 448

–

450.•Hooykaas, R. (1963).

The principle of uniformity in geology, biology, and theology

(2nd ed.). London: E.J. Brill.•Kurtz, Paul (1990).

Philosophical Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism

. Prometheus Books.•Lacey, Alan R. (1995). "Naturalism". In Honderich, Ted.

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy

. OxfordUniversity Press. pp. 604

–

606.•Post, John F. (1995). "Naturalism". In Audi, Robert.

The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy

. CambridgeUniversity Press. pp. 517

–

518.•Simpson, G. G. (1963). "Historical science". In Albritton Jr., C. C..

Fabric of geology

. Stanford, California:Freeman, Cooper, and Company.•Strahler, Arthur N. (1992).

Understanding Science: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues

. Buffalo: PrometheusBooks.Journals•Gould, Stephen J. (1965). "Is uniformitarianism necessary".

American Journal of Science

263

.Web•A., Kate; Sergei, Vitaly (2000). "Evolution and Philosophy: Science and Philosophy" (http://library.

thinkquest.org/C004367/ph1.

shtml). Think Quest. Retrieved 19 January 2009.•Papineau, David (2007). "Naturalism" (http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2007/entries/naturalism/). InEdward N. Zalta.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(Spring 2007 ed.).•Schafersman, Steven D. (1996). "Naturalism is an Essential Part of Science and Critical Inquiry" (http://www.stephenjaygould.

org/ctrl/schafersman_nat.

html). Retrieved 3 November 2010.

External links

•"Naturalism" in the

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(http://www.

iep.

utm.

edu/n/naturali.

htm)•"Naturalism" in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(http://plato.

stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/)•"Naturalism in Legal Philosophy" in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(http://plato.

stanford.

edu/ entries/lawphil-naturalism/)•"Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics" in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(http://plato.stanford.

edu/entries/naturalism-mathematics/)•"Moral Naturalism" in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/ naturalism-moral/)•"Physicalism" in the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/physicalism/)•"Naturalism" in the

Catholic Encyclopedia

(http://www.

newadvent.org/cathen/10713a.

htm)•Center for Naturalism (http://www.

naturalism.

org/)

Metaphysical naturalism287•Naturalism (http://skepdic.com/naturalism.html) entry in The Skeptic's Dictionary•Naturalism Library (http://www.

infidels.

org/library/modern/nontheism/naturalism/) at the Secular Web•Naturalism as a Worldview (http://www.richardcarrier.

info/naturalism.

html) resource page by Richard Carrier•A Defense of Naturalism (http://www.

infidels.

org/library/modern/keith_augustine/thesis.html) by KeithAugustine (2001)

Mind-body dichotomy

René Descartes' illustration of mind/body dualism.Inputs are passed on by the sensory organs to theepiphysis in the brain and from there to the immaterialspirit.

The

mind-body problem

is a philosophical problem arising in thefields of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. The problem arisesbecause mental phenomena appear to be qualitatively andsubstantially different from the physical bodies on which theyappear to depend. There are a few major theories on the resolutionof the problem. Dualism is the theory that mind and body are twodistinct substances, and monism is the theory that mind and bodyare, in reality, just one substance. Monist materialists (also calledphysicalists) take the view that they are both matter, and monistidealists take the view that they are both in the mind. Neutralmonists take the view that both are reducible to a third, neutralsubstance.The problem was identified by René Descartes' in the sense knownby the modern Western world, although the issue was alsoaddressed by pre-Aristotelian philosophers

[1]

and in Avicennianphilosophy.

[2]

A dualist view of reality may lead one to consider the corporeal aslittle valued

[1]

and trivial. The rejection of the mind-bodydichotomy is found in French Structuralism, and is a position thatgenerally characterized post-war French philosophy.

[3]

The absence of an empirically identifiable meeting pointbetween the non-physical mind and its physical extension has proven problematic to dualism and many modernphilosophers of mind maintain that the mind is not something separate from the body.

[4]

These approaches have beenparticularly influential in the sciences, particularly in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionarypsychology and the various neurosciences.

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

Plato

Plato argued that, as the body is from the material world, the soul is from the world of ideas and is thus immortal. Hebelieved the soul was temporarily united with the body and would only be separated at death, when it would return tothe world of Forms. Since the soul does not exist in time and space, as the body does, it can access universal truths.For Plato, ideas (or Forms) are the true reality, and are experienced by the soul. The body is for Plato empty in that itcan not access the abstract reality of the world; it can only experience shadows. This is determined by Plato'sessentially rationalistic epistemology.

Mind-body dichotomy288

Notes and citations

[1]

The mind-body problem

(http://human-nature.

com/rmyoung/papers/pap102h.

html) by Robert M. Young[2]edited by Henrik Lagerlund. (2007-09-30),

Forming the Mind: Essays on the Internal Senses and the Mind/Body Problem from Avicenna tothe Medical Enlightenment

, Springer Science+Business Media, ISBN 9781402060830[3]Turner 96, p.76[4]Kim, J. (1995). Honderich, Ted. ed.

Problems in the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford Companion to Philosophy

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.[5]Pinel, J.

Psychobiology

, (1990) Prentice Hall, Inc. ISBN 8815071741[6]LeDoux, J. (2002)

The Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are

, New York:Viking Penguin. ISBN 8870787958[7]Russell, S. and Norvig, P.

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach

, New Jersey:Prentice Hall. ISBN 0131038052[8]Dawkins, R.

The Selfish Gene

(1976) Oxford:Oxford University Press. ISBN

Kim, J., "Mind-Body Problem", Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Ted Honderich (ed.). Oxford:Oxford UniversityPress. 1995.

Bibliography

•Turner, Bryan S.

Body and Society: Exploration in social theory

(http://books.

google.

com/ books?id=K_8WxOqOWtMCThe) 1996

External links

•Wikibooks: Consciousness Studies•

The mind-body problem

(http://human-nature.

com/rmyoung/papers/pap102h.

html) by Robert M. Young

Mind/brain identity

René Descartes' illustration of mind/body dualism.Inputs are passed on by the sensory organs to theepiphysis in the brain and from there to the immaterialspirit.

The

mind-body problem

is a philosophical problem arising in thefields of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. The problem arisesbecause mental phenomena appear to be qualitatively andsubstantially different from the physical bodies on which theyappear to depend. There are a few major theories on the resolutionof the problem. Dualism is the theory that mind and body are twodistinct substances, and monism is the theory that mind and bodyare, in reality, just one substance. Monist materialists (also calledphysicalists) take the view that they are both matter, and monistidealists take the view that they are both in the mind. Neutralmonists take the view that both are reducible to a third, neutralsubstance.The problem was identified by René Descartes' in the sense knownby the modern Western world, although the issue was alsoaddressed by pre-Aristotelian philosophers

[1]

and in Avicennianphilosophy.

[2]

A dualist view of reality may lead one to consider the corporeal aslittle valued

[1]

and trivial. The rejection of the mind-bodydichotomy is found in French Structuralism, and is a position thatgenerally characterized post-war French philosophy.

[3]

The absence of an empirically identifiable meeting pointbetween the non-physical mind and its physical extension has proven problematic to dualism and many modernphilosophers of mind maintain that the mind is not something separate from the body.

[4]

These approaches have been

Mind/brain identity289particularly influential in the sciences, particularly in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionarypsychology and the various neurosciences.

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

Plato

Plato argued that, as the body is from the material world, the soul is from the world of ideas and is thus immortal. Hebelieved the soul was temporarily united with the body and would only be separated at death, when it would return tothe world of Forms. Since the soul does not exist in time and space, as the body does, it can access universal truths.For Plato, ideas (or Forms) are the true reality, and are experienced by the soul. The body is for Plato empty in that itcan not access the abstract reality of the world; it can only experience shadows. This is determined by Plato'sessentially rationalistic epistemology.

Notes and citations

[1]

The mind-body problem

(http://human-nature.

com/rmyoung/papers/pap102h.

html) by Robert M. Young[2]edited by Henrik Lagerlund. (2007-09-30),

Forming the Mind: Essays on the Internal Senses and the Mind/Body Problem from Avicenna tothe Medical Enlightenment

, Springer Science+Business Media, ISBN 9781402060830[3]Turner 96, p.76[4]Kim, J. (1995). Honderich, Ted. ed.

Problems in the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford Companion to Philosophy

. Oxford: Oxford University Press.[5]Pinel, J.

Psychobiology

, (1990) Prentice Hall, Inc. ISBN 8815071741[6]LeDoux, J. (2002)

The Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are

, New York:Viking Penguin. ISBN 8870787958[7]Russell, S. and Norvig, P.

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach

, New Jersey:Prentice Hall. ISBN 0131038052[8]Dawkins, R.

The Selfish Gene

(1976) Oxford:Oxford University Press. ISBN

Kim, J., "Mind-Body Problem", Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Ted Honderich (ed.). Oxford:Oxford UniversityPress. 1995.

Bibliography

•Turner, Bryan S.

Body and Society: Exploration in social theory

(http://books.

google.

com/ books?id=K_8WxOqOWtMCThe) 1996

External links

•Wikibooks: Consciousness Studies•

The mind-body problem

(http://human-nature.

com/rmyoung/papers/pap102h.

html) by Robert M. Young

Mindstream291stream of that which from one viewpoint is believed to be matter and from another a mind. However, what we callthe mental and the material occurs in a unity of organization. Organization is something dynamic."

[2]

In discussing the continuity of mind or awareness in the absence of a self, various words and concepts have beenemployed. "Mindstream" is often used both colloquially and in more scholarly discourse, as when DzogchenRinpoche writes "[t]he Buddhadharma is a process, one through which we train and tame our own mindstreams. Oneapproach is to go to the root of what we mean by 'I,' our sense of self or individual self-identity."

[3]

According toscholar Wiliam Waldron, "Indian Buddhists see the 'evolution' of mind i[n] terms of the continuity of individualmind-streams from one lifetime to the next, with karma as the basic causal mechanism whereby transformations aretransmitted from one life to the next."

[4]

Scholar Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys Davids (1903: pp. 587

–

588) assesses Louis de La Vallée-Poussin's work on"mindstream" in Buddhism:Professor de la Vallee Poussin finds a very positive evolution of vijnana-theory in certainSanskrit-Buddhist texts. The term samtana is joined to or substituted for it

—

a term which seems toapproximate to our own neopsychological concept of mind as a 'continuum' or flux. And he infers fromcertain contexts that this vijnana-samtana was regarded, not as one permanent, unchanging,transmigrating entity, as the soul was in the atman-theory, but as an "essential series of individual andmomentary consciousnesses," forming a "procession vivace et autonome." By autonomous he meansindependent of physical processes. According to this view the upspringing of a new vijnana atconception, as the effect of the preceding last vijnana of some expiring person, represents no change inkind, but only, to put it so, of degree. The vijnana is but a recurring series, not a transferred entity orprinciple. Hence it is more correct, if less convenient, to speak, not of vijnana, but of the samtana of pravrtti-vijnanani.

[5]

In Vajrayāna (tantric Buddhism) "mindstream" may be understood as an

upāya

metaphor for the nonlocal,atemporal

[6]

stream of moments

[7]

(Tibetan:

bkod-pa thig-le

)

[8]

or "quanta of consciousness" (Tibetan:

thig-le

;Sanskrit:

bindu

).

[9]

It proceeds endlessly in a lifetime, in between lifetimes (Tibetan:

bardo

), from lifetime tolifetime, prior to engagement in the wheel of life, through samsara and beyond. It does so as an inclusive"continuum" (Tibetan:

rgyud

) rather than an individuated, separate, or discrete perceptual, cognitive, or experientialentity, as in the Buddhadharma conception of the

ātman

which is diametrically opposed to the Atman of theUpanishads.A yogin who has recognized the inseparability of samsara and nirvana is said to dwell in (Wylie:

zung-'jug

; Sanskrit:

yuganaddha

)

[10]

In the entwined

Dzogchen

traditions of Bönpo and Nyingmapa, the mindstream constitutes acontinuum of

gankyil

composed of the five pure lights of the five wisdoms which unite the

trikāya

. These tantriccorrelations (or "twilight language") are evident in the iconographic representation of the

five Jīnas

[11]

and the

saṃpanna-krama

of the

gankyil

and mandala in

Dzogchen

practice. The "supreme

siddhi

" or "absolute bodhicitta" of the

Dzogchenpa

is when the stream of their bodymind (

namarupa

) is "released" (in nirvana) as the rainbow body.

Terms

Buddhist scholar Alexander Berzin uses the term "mental continuum" in translation of the Tibetan

sems-rgyud

andSanskrit

santāna

, which he defines as "the stream of continuity of mental activity (mind, awareness) of an individualbeing, which has no beginning, which continues even into Buddhahood, and, according to Mahayana, has no end.According to the Hinayana tenets, it comes to an end when an arhat or Buddha dies at the end of the lifetime inwhich the person attains liberation or enlightenment. Also called a 'mind-stream.'"

[12]

The doctrinal understanding of the mindstream concept in Buddhist traditions evolved over centuries and varies to some extent by tradition.

Mindstream292

Sanskrit

Citta-saṃtāna

(Sanskrit) has been defined as "literally, 'the stream of mind,' a general term used to indicate thecontinuity of the personality of an individual in the absence of the permanently abiding "self" (ātman) that Buddhismdenies."

[13]

Citta

holds the semantic field of "that which is conscious", "the act of mental apprehension known asordinary consciousness", "the conventional and relative mind/heart".

[14]

Citta

has two aspects: "...Its two aspects areattending to and collecting of impressions or traces (Sanskrit:

vāsanā

) cf.

vijñāna

."

[14]

Saṃtāna

or

santāna

(Sanskrit)holds the semantic field of "eternal", "continuum", "a series of momentary events" or "life-stream".

[14]

Tibetan

Citta

is often rendered as

sems

in Tibetan and saṃtāna corresponds to

rgyud

, which holds the semantic field of "continuum", "stream", and "thread"--Citta-saṃtāna is therefore rendered

sems rgyud.

Interestingly,

rgyud

is the termthat Tibetan translators (Tibetan:

lotsawa

) employed to render the Sanskrit term "

tantra

".

[15]

Thugs-rgyud

is a synonym for

sems rgyud

[16]

--

Thugs

holds the semantic field: "Buddha-mind", "(enlightened)mind", "mind", "soul", "spirit", "purpose", "intention", "unbiased perspective", "spirituality", "responsiveness","spiritual significance", "awareness", "primordial (state, experience)", "enlightened mind", "heart", "breast","feelings" and is sometimes a homonym of "citta" (Sanskrit).

[17]

Thugs-rgyud

holds the semantic field "wisdom","transmission", "heart-mind continuum", "mind", "[continuum/ stream of mind]" and "nature of mind."

Chinese, Korean and Japanese

The Chinese equivalent of Sanskrit

citta-saṃtāna

and Tibetan

sems-kyi rgyud

("mindstream") is

xin xiangxu

(simplified Chinese:

心相续

; traditional Chinese:

心相續

; pinyin:

xīn xiāngxù

; Wade

–

Giles:

hsin hsiang-hsü

).According to the

Digital Dictionary of Buddhism

,

xīn xiāngxù

means "continuance of the mental stream" (fromSanskrit

citta-saṃtāna

or

citta-saṃtati

), contrasted with

wú xiàngxù

無相續

"no continuity of the mental stream"(from

asaṃtāna

or

asaṃdhi

) and

shì xiāngxù

識相續

"stream of consciousness" (from

vijñāna-saṃtāna

).This compound combines

xin

心

"heart; mind; thought; conscience; core" and

xiangxu

"succeed each other", with

xiang

相

”

each other; one another; mutual; reciprocal" and

xu

續

or

续

"continue; carry on; succeed". Thus itmeans "thoughts succeeding each other".

Xin xiangxu

is pronounced

sim sangsok

in Korean and

shin sōzoku

in Japanese.

Mental "stream" metaphors

The metaphorical use of "stream" to describe mentality is characteristic of but not unique to the Buddhist literatureand worldview. In English for example, "stream of consciousness" is more familiar than "mindstream".

[18]

William James promoted the "stream of consciousness" with its particular nomenclature, some state drawn fromBain (refer following), whilst immersed in Buddhist studies and the accompanying protracted spiritual discipline of

vipaśyanā

, as related by Wallace (2003)

[19]

:Buddhologist Roger R. Jackson similarly portrays Buddhist meditation as a type of ritual act (Jackson1999:231). While such characterizations are certainly valid for some types of Buddhist meditation, theyare profoundly misleading for the practices of meditative quiescence (

samatha

) and contemplativeinsight (

vipasyana

), which are the two core modes of Buddhist meditative training. Techniques of meditative quiescence entail the rigorous cultivation of attentional stability and vividness, methodshaving a strong bearing on William James

’

s psychological theories of attention (Wallace 1998, 1999a).

Mindstream293

Buddhism

There are two entwined mindstreams according to the two truths, the absolute and relative, that are ultimatelynon-dual according to Atiyoga. One is the divine mindstream of "consciousness" which is engaged in the

phowa

practice, for example; the other the mindstream of thought and ideation (Tibetan:

sem

; Sanskrit:

manas

)(

vṛtti-citta

[20]

).Gyatso, Jinpa and Wallace (2003: p. 97) identify two kinds of consciousness continua and associate the most subtlestate of consciousness continuum, elsewhere identified in this article as the "mindstream substrate", with what isknown in Tibetan Buddhist, Dzogchen and Bonpo discourse as "clear light" (Tib:

'od-gsal

):In Vajrayāna Buddhism the subtlest state of consciousness is known as

clear light

. In terms of categoriesof consciousness, there is one type of consciousness that consists of a permanent stream or an unendingcontinuity and there are other forms of consciousness whose continuum comes to an end. Both theselevels of consciousness - one consisting of an endless continuum and the other of a finite continuum -have a momentary nature. That is to say, they arise from moment to moment, and they are constantly ina state of flux. So the permanence of the first kind is only in terms of its continuum. The subtlestconsciousness consists of such an eternal continuum, while the streams of the grosser states of consciousness do end.

[21]

Sogyal Rinpoche (1994: p. 73) frames the importance of the stream metaphor in relation to meditation and the natureof mind, the objective of a meditative

sādhana

:In the ancient meditation instructions, it is said that at the beginning thoughts will arrive one on top of another, uninterrupted, like a steep mountain waterfall. Gradually, as you perfect meditation, thoughtsbecome like the water in a deep, narrow gorge, then a great river slowly winding its way down to thesea, and finally the mind becomes like a still and placid ocean, ruffled by only the occasional ripple orwave.

[22]

Bucknell

et al.

(1986: pp. 112

–

113)

[23]

find numerous references to a stream of thought and imagery:In Buddhist literature the mental condition in whichsequences of imagery and verbalizing run onendlessly is often compared to a flowing stream. We find in the oldest section of the Tipiṭaka the term"stream of consciousness" (viññāṇa-sotaṃ).

[24]

The same metaphor is often found in the Tibetanliterature. The guru Padma Karpo spoke of "thoughts...following one after the other as if in a continuousstream";

[25]

Mipham Nampar Gyalba observed, the "stream of images flows unbroken";

[26]

and in theVow of Mahāmudrā, there is reference to 'the mind river'.

[27]

This manner of speaking is also commonat the present day. Tarthang Tülku refers to "the stream of mental images"

[28]

and 'the flow of thoughtsand images';

[29]

and David-Neel, in a discussion of the meditation practices she observed in Tibet,speaks of "the continual, swift, flowing stream of thoughts and mental images..."

[30]

Psychology

The term, "stream of consciousness" was coined by the philosopher Alexander Bain in 1855 and later popularized bythe psychologist, William James. Bain (1855: p. 380) wrote, "The concurrence of Sensations in one common streamof consciousness,

—

on the same cerebral highway,

—

enables those of different senses to be associated as readily asthe sensations of the same sense."

[31]

After originating in psychological theory, the "stream of consciousness"metaphor became more common in English usage, and was adapted into different contexts, for instance, the streamof consciousness (narrative mode) in literary criticism.James' classic 1890

Principles of Psychology

used several "stream" metaphors . Chapter 9, "The Stream of Thought"describes "the stream of consciousness" as constantly changing and "sensibly continuous":Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as "chain" or "train" donot describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A "river" or a

Mindstream294"stream" are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described.

In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life

.

[32]

"Mental stream" occurs in another context:The continuous flow of the mental stream is sacrificed, and in its place an atomism, a brickbat plan of construction, is preached, for the existence of which no good introspective grounds can be broughtforward, and out of which presently grow all sorts of paradoxes and contradictions, the heritage of woeof students of the mind.

[33]

The psychologist Edward B. Titchener (1909: p. 19) used "mind-stream" to differentiate "mind" from"consciousness":We shall therefore take mind and consciousness to mean the same thing. But as we have the twodifferent words, and it is convenient to make some distinction between them, we shall speak of mindwhen we mean the sum-total of mental processes occurring in the life-time of an individual, and weshall speak of consciousness when we mean the sum-total of mental processes occurring now, at anygiven "present" time. Consciousness will thus be a section, a division, of the mind-stream.

[34]

Historical development of the Mindstream doctrine

Formative context

Koslowski (2003: p. 67, note 1) states that a suite of worldviews of Indic origin, including Hinduism, Buddhism,Jainism and Sikhism, are known collectively as 'Sanatāna traditions'.

[35]

In the listing of seven notions that arecommon to the "Sanatāna traditions" Koslowski (2003: p. 74) identifies one of the seven principles as "Santati orPravāha-ekatva" where 'santati' (Sanskrit) denotes "continuum" and 'pravāha' (Sanskrit) denotes "stream, river" and'ekatva' (Sanskrit) denotes "one truth":Santati or Pravāha-ekatva (Continuity of life from the beginning-less situation to the end): Process fromthe beginning-less state to the liberation of life-forms has a causal continuity. This continuity of life-form is terminated only on the attainment of its nature. Each life-form is an instance of continuumand embodies a unity of process it undergoes. Life-forms are condemned to be possessed with such acontinuum except perhaps in the state of liberation (if your theory demands that). On the details of thenature of causal processes underlying continuity, different sub-traditions differ significantly, but realityof continuity of life-form is acceptable to all the sub-traditions. Formal continuity between one state of life to the other state of life is accepted irrespective of this or that state. All life-forms embody thiscontinuity, but characterization of the continuum and its embodiment differs in the differentsub-traditions.

[36]

For an understanding of the Buddhist traditions emergent in India and the development of their various views, it isimportant to affirm the dialogic forum of the

Abhidharma

as does King:

[37]

Buddhist philosophical debate in India took place within an Abhidharmic context.As Chatterji (1931: pp. 206

–

207) states:Now all the schools of Brahmanic philosophy have posited some permanent entity, i.e. soul as thecognizer to which cognition is variously related. The Buddhists have, however, denied the existence of any such permanent entity. The aggregates of rupa, samjna, samskara, vedana and vijnana,- the firstcorresponding to what we call material elements and all the rest to mental elements - are the stuff of which an individual is made. Cognition which is not subservient to any intelligent being, is referred asthe samjna skandha or the vijnana skandha according as it is determinate (savikalpa) or indeterminate(nirvikalpa). The place of the transcendental atman is taken by vijnana. It is the continuity of cognition(santana) which holds together, unifies and synthesizes the fleeting moments of cognition and seems to

Mindstream295give us the notion, though erroneous, of a subject or a knower acquiring knowledge both presentative(nirvikalpa or svalaksana) and representative (savikalpa or samanyalaksana). This is in general theBuddhist view on the nature of the pramatr or the subject. But there are some notable points of difference among the various schools.

[38]

Early Buddhist context

Karunadasa (1999, 2000) holds that early Buddhism and early Buddhist discourse "often refer to the mutualopposition between two views":•"permanence" or "eternalism" (Pali:

sassatavada

) also sometimes referred to as "the belief in being" (Pāli:

bhava-ditti

); and•"annihilation" or "nihilism" (Pāli:

ucchadevada

) also sometimes referred to as "the belief in non-being" (Pāli:

vibhava-ditti

).

[39]

As Buddha relates to Kaccānagotta in the

Kaccānagotta Sutta

as rendered in English by the Myanmar PiṭakaAssociation Editorial Committee (1993: p. 35):For the most part, Kaccāna, sentient beings depend on two kinds of belief - belief that "there is" (thingsexist) and belief that "there is not" (things do not exist).

[40]

Karunadasa (1999) states:...it is within the framework of the Buddhist critique of

sassatavada

and

ucchadavada

that the Buddhistdoctrines seem to assume their significance. For it is through the demolition of these two world-viewsthat Buddhism seeks to construct its own world-view. The conclusion is that it was as a critical responseto the mutual opposition between these two views that Buddhism emerged as a new faith amidst manyother faiths.

[39]

In Yogācāra

Mañjuśrīmitra states in the

Bodhicittabhavana

,

[41]

a seminal early text of

Ati Yoga

:The mental-continuum (citta-santana) is without boundaries or extension; it is not one thing, norsupported by anything.Mindstream is a conflation subsuming "heartmind" (Sanskrit:

bodhi-citta

) and "wisdom-mind" (Sanskrit:

jñāna-dharmakāya

; Tibetan:

ye-shes chos-sku

).Lusthaus (n.d.) in mapping the development and doctrinal relationships of the store consciousness (

ālaya-vijñāna

),Buddha nature (

tathāgatagarbha

), Yogācāra, the self (

ātman

),

Abhidharma

, primordial substrative nature (

prakṛti

)and the mindstream states:Several Yogācāra notions basic to the Abhidharma wing [of Yogācāra] came under severe attack byother Buddhists, especially the notion of

ālaya-vijñāna

, which was denounced as something akin to theHindu notions of

ātman

(permanent, invariant self) and

prakṛti

(primordial substrative nature fromwhich all mental, emotional and physical things evolve). Eventually the critiques became so entrenchedthat the Abhidharma wing atrophied. By the end of the eighth century it was ecliped by thelogico-epistemic tradition [of Yogācāra] and by a hybrid school that combined basic Yogācāra doctrineswith

Tathāgatagarbha

thought. The logico-epistemological wing in part side-stepped the critique byusing the term

citta-santāna

, "mind-stream", instead of

ālaya-vijñāna

, for what amounted to roughly thesame idea. It was easier to deny that a "stream" represented a reified self. On the other hand, theTathāgatagarbha hybrid school was no stranger to the charge of smuggling notions of selfhood into itsdoctrines, since, for example, it explicitly defined the

tathāgatagarbha

as "permanent, pleasurable,

self

,and pure (

nitya

,

sukha

,

ātman

,

śuddha

). Many Tathāgatagarbha texts, in fact, argue for the acceptance of selfhood (

ātman

) as a sign of higher accomplishment. The hybrid school attempted to conflate

Mindstream296

tathāgatagarbha

with the

ālaya-vijñāna

.

[42]

Capriles (2004: p. 35) defines the consciousness of the base-of-all (Skt.:

ālayavijñāna

; Tib.:

kun-bzhi rnam-shes

) ascongruent with the mindstream and mentions

vāsanā

,

bījas

, and

tathatā

:The consciousness of the base-of-all was not conceived as an immutable absolute, which is how theAtman of Hinduism is described; in agreement with the Hinayana idea of a succession of instants of knowledge, it was explained as a continually changing stream of consciousness (Skt., santana; Tib.,gyü), and was said to be the vehicle that carries the karmic imprints (vasanas or bijas) that go from onelife to the next. In turn, from the standpoint of experience, the consciousness of the base-of-all is anample condition that yogis may find by absorption. Though the consciousness of the base-of-all is of thenature of thatness (Skt., tathata; Tib., dezhinnyi)

—

the absolute nature that is the single constituent of all entities

—

this consciousness is also the root of samsara.

[43]

The word "atman" is used in

tathagatagarbha

literature after being defined or re-qualified in a new, idiosyncraticway. The

Buddha-Nature Treatise

for example defines "self" as the perfection of the

anātman-pāramitā

. Thus onerealizes his or her "true self" by perfecting his or her understanding of the truth of

anātman

. (See

Atman

.)Dzogchen (2007: p. 84) asserts an unsourced paraphrase or pastiche of a view attributed to Nagarjuna:Nagarjuna says that the mindstream of every unenlightened being is permeated by the heart essence of buddhahood. The fundamental nature of our mindstreams is

tathagatagarbha

, or buddha nature, the seedand heart essence of an enlightened being. It is this quality that gives us the capacity to becomebuddhas.

[44]

The view in the direct quotation above is generally attributed to the Yogācāra. It is clear that the first sentence in theabove quotation holds the position attributed to Nāgārjuna. It is unclear whether the latter two sentences in thequotation are also that of Nāgārjuna, or alternatively the position of Dzogchen Rinpoche.Waldron (2003: p. 178) renders Vasubandhu's Yogacara account from the

Abhidharmakośabhāṣya

of cycliccausality (

bhavacakra

),

kleśa

and karma in relation to the mindstream:...the mind stream (

santāna

) increases gradually by the mental afflictions (

kleśa

) and by actions (

karma

),and goes again to the next world. In this way the circle of existence is without beginning."

[45]

[46]

King (1998) holds:Schmithausen offers a list of twenty uses which the conceptof alayavijnana provided (14 'philosophical'and 6 exegetical) for the early Yogacarins. Most of these cluster around the explanation of personalcontinuity given the absence of an abiding-self, and providing a link between karmic action andsubsequent fruition. The Sautrantika metaphor of the seed (bija) became central in the case of the latterissue once the Vaibhasika conceptionof the existence of dharmas in past, present and future (thesarvastivada position) was rejected. However, as Schmithausen points out, althoughthe Sautrantikapostulated the notion of a karmic seed to establish causal continuity over time, the Yogacara seems tohave felt that this required the further postulation of a store (alaya) consciousness as the repository of these seeds. Nevertheless, it is important to note at this point that the store-consciousness is by no meansconsidered to be an ultimate reality in the works of either Vasubandhu the Yogacarin or Asanga, as hassometimes been suggested.

[37]

Dharmakīrti (fl. 7th century) wrote a treatise on the nature of the mindstream in his

Substantiation of Other Mindstreams

(

Saṃtãnãntarasiddhi

).

[47]

Ratnakīrti (fl. c7-8th century), a disciple of Dharmak īrti, wrote a work thatfurther developed and refined the themes therein, entitled: 'Refutation of Other mindstreams' (

Saṃtãnãntaradusana

).He did not refute the tenets of the

Saṃtãnãntarasiddhi

but leavened the nature of the issue from an empirical one,that is, where there are manifold minds cognized by one's experience of others' mental processes attributed throughthe perceived actions of other sentient beings that arise in one's continuum; to an absolutist view, where there is only"one mindstream" (

ekacitta

). Ratnakīrti's argument is that the valid cognition (

pramāna

) of another's mindstream is

Mindstream297an inference (

anumāna

), not a direct perception (

pratyakṣa

). Moreover, Ratnakīrti introduced the two truths doctrineas key to the nature of the discussion as inference is trafficking with illusiory universals (

samanya

), the proof of themindstreams of others, whilst empirically valid in relative truth (

saṃvṛtisatya

), does not hold ultimate metaphysicalcertainty in absolute truth (

paramārthasatya

).Dharmakirti held to the doctrine of the mindstream as beginningless and yet also discussed the mindstream as atemporal sequence, and that as there are no true beginnings, there are no true endings, hence, the "beginninglesstime" motif that is imperative to understand the mindstream, as Dunne (2004: p. 1) relates:Buddhist philosophers often speak of beginninglessness. It is claimed that the minds of living beings, forexample, have no beginning, and that our current [U]niverse is only one in a beginningless cycle of expansion and decay. Some Buddhist thinkers would claim that even the most mundane task can haveno true beginning. That is, if a beginning occurs, there must be some moment, some "now", in which itoccurs. For the present to exist, however, there must be a past and a future, for what would "now" meanif there were no time other than now? And of course, if there is a past, then how could now be abeginning? Now should instead be the end of the past. Each beginning in short, must itself have abeginning.

[48]

Universality

Though a conceptual mystery, mindstream may be conceived as nonlinear and holistic. The medium and conduit of mindstream is æther or space and is unbounded by temporality or locality. Welwood (2000) describes it in this way:If the contents of mind are like pails and buckets floating in a stream, and the mindstream is like thedynamic flowing of the water, pure awareness is like the water itself in its essential wetness. Sometimesthe water is still, sometimes it is turbulent; yet it always remains as it is

–

wet, fluid, watery. In the sameway, pure awareness is never confined [n]or disrupted by any mind-state. Therefore, it is the source of liberation and true equanimity.

[49]

Welwood (2000) introduces "pure awareness", the essence-quality of the mindstream, synonymous with naturalmind (Tibetan:

rig-pa

). This is the primordial and principal constitutional consciousness of being. It is accessible by,and the point of origin of, all sentient beings. "Sentient beings" is a technical term in Vajrayāna denoting themindstreams of all those consciousnesses not yet aware of the emptiness and fullness of perfection. Welwood (2000)links the mindstream with the three bodies (

trikāya

):In terms of the Buddhist teaching of the three kayas, we could say that the contents of consciousnessbelong to the nirmanakaya, the realm of manifest form. The pulsation of the mindstream, with itsalternation between movement and stillness, belongs to the sambhogakaya, the realm of energy flow.And the larger, open ground of awareness, first discovered in moments of stillness, is the dharmakaya,the realm of pure being (the thing-in-itself), eternally present, spontaneous, and free of entrapment inany form whatsoever.

[50]

The Buddhist and Bön teachings of mindstream and heartmind inform one another, as does bodymind. As Chodron(1991) states:Just as the body is a 'continuity' even though it has parts, the mindstream or consciousness is also a'continuity', although it has parts.

[51]

Hawter (1995) succinctly relates:All of our actions lay down imprints on our mindstream which have the potential to ripen at some timein the future.

[52]

This should not imply that the mindstream is linear and only flows one way, but the mindstream is understood in theHimalayan tradition to flow all ways, always. For Morrell (1999):

Mindstream298The Mahayanists also contend that the mind forms a continuous, unending and unbroken mindstream orflow of consciousness, from beginningless time and indestructible. Thoughts and feelings in themindstream are regarded as of supreme importance to Buddhist practice.

[53]

Kelzang Gyatso (1708-1757 CE), the 7th Dalai Lama is translated

[54]

as stating:[A]ll things in the world and beyond [a]re simply projections of names and thoughts. Not even thetiniest atom exists by itself, [i]ndependently [or] in its own right.Therefore, the Universe

[55]

[56]

[57]

is the thoughtform of the collective mindstream of all sentient beings (and thereis nothing which is non-sentient; pansentience).

[58]

This pansentient totality

is

the great continuum, the "greatperfection" or "total completion" (Tibetan:

rdzog-pa chen-po

) of

Dzogchen

and

Ati Yoga

[59]

(Tibetan:

shin-turnal-'byor

[60]

where "

shin-tu

[61]

" holds the semantic field of "total", "complete", "absolute" and "

rnal-'byor

[62]

"holds the semantic field of "yoga"; Sanskrit: "

Ati

" holds the semantic field "primordial", "original", "first"; "

yoga

"holds the semantic field "communion", "union").

Iconography

External images

For an example of an iconographic representation of the mindstream, see this icon (Tibetan:

[[thangka

[63]

]

) of Tapihritsa]

The mindstream as experiential phenomenon: usage and application in

sādhana

Experiential determinant:

vāsanās

Capriles (2008: p. 323) under the guidance of Norbu in discussing the storehouse consciousness (

ālaya-vijñāna

)states:..the term "storehouse" and the metaphor of the tank should not deceive us into conveying it as acontainer-like

topos

, static and passive: the

alaya vijñana

(is) a continually changing stream of consciousness (Skt.

santana

; Tib. semgyü) consisting of successive instants of knowledge (and as such,rather than being a continuous entity... it may be compared to a succession of perfectly elastic,friction-free billiard balls hitting each other), which is regarded as a vehicle carrying karmic imprints(skt.

avarana

or

vasana

, according to the case; Tib. bagchag [bag chags]) from one life to the next

—

or, which is the same, from one psychological state to the next.

[64]

The adventitious obscurations of the mindstream are the karmic imprints (

vāsanās

) which may be viewed asobstructive sediment if we extend the metaphor: sediment that forms "concretions", "fixed ideas or conceptions"(

saṃskāra

). Technically, it is the

vāsanās

which link the continuity. As Lusthaus (2002: p. 472)

[65]

states drawingfrom the

Ch'eng wei-shih lun

which discusses "linkage

vāsanās

" (

bhāvāṇga-vāsanās

,

yu-chih hsi-ch'i

):Linkage vāsanās account for karmic continuity between lives and between moments.The mindstream may be construed or envisioned in manifold ways and it is valuable following Yogācāraconceptions of the mechanics of perception and experience to model it as flowing or projecting outwards, as a streamof karmic impressions (

vāsanā

) from the cache of the store consciousness (

ālayavijñāna

) determining the play of ourexperience and worldview:In early Mahayana literature "vijnapti" came to designate any cognitive act which is carried out by themind (manas). In the Yogacara school all experience is claimed to be fundamentally "mental" in nature.More specifically, an individual's experience is constituted by a series of projections externallyintimated from the store-consciousness (alayavijnana) of karmic impressions (vasana). There appears to

Mindstream299be no explicit distinction here between types of vinapti as we find in the Vaibhasika texts.

[37]

Lusthaus (2002: p. 474) further explores this projection of karmic imprints (

vāsanās

) as "latent linguisticconditioning" (

ming-yen hsi ch'i

) that forms our "perceptual field" (

viṣaya

) in his commentary to the

Ch'eng wei-shihlun

Due to this type of vāsanās one actually sees and experiences the world in certain ways, and one actuallybecomes a certain type of person, embodying certain theories which immediately shape the manner inwhich we experience. A dialectical materialist, for instance, who has embodied a theory of dialecticalmaterialism, actually sees the world as an occasion of dialectical economic forces in whichpeople--including oneself--are instantiations of economic principles, such as class conflict, alienations,structures of production, and so on. A psychiatrist, embodying certain psychological theories, sees herpatients as enactments of those theories, and may notice things about her patients that others do not see.Linguistic conceptual conditioning shapes how things (viṣaya) appear, and also the modes throughwhich we approach experience (citta-caitta).

[66]

Wangyal (2002: p. 10) in discussing the five pure lights which are the fabric of the mindstream states:Karmic dispositions and conditioning determine the nature of the world we inhabit: What we experienceexternally is a projection of what is internal. This world is a hell for some people, for others it isheaven.

[67]

Wangyal (2002: p. 117) in explicating "The Fifth Lamp" (

Zhing khams ngo-sprod sgron-ma

) from within the largertreatise of the

Six Lamps

(

Sgron-ma drug

), contained within the Bonpo

Zhang-Zhung Nyan-Gyud

, conveys that ahollow doll with holes in the "nine gateways" (Skt:

navadvāre

) is employed as a teaching tool in

Dzogchen

toquicken this view:In a dark room, a lit candle is placed inside the doll. There is light in the center of the doll, light movingthroughout the doll, and light illuminating what is external to the doll--it is all the same light...The Lightfrom inside the doll illuminates what is external to it. This is the opposite of the way we think in theWest, where it is believed that the world comes into us through the senses...It is important to rememberthat what appears to be outside is actually phenomena arising in awareness. Experience is non-dual;subject and object arise together. They are divided into internal self and external object onlyconceptually--the light is not actually divided within or without. In reality both poles of duality areempty, luminous phenomena arising in the nature of mind.

[68]

For further discussion of the "lamps" (

sgron-ma

), see Scheidegger (2007).

[69]

Conditioning the mindstream: empowerment and sādhana

Empowerment

In Vajrayana Buddhism,

adhiṣṭhāna

(Tib. byin-rlabs), often translated as "blessing," refers to the process by whichthe mindstreams of students are said to be conditioned by a tantric preceptor. The Tibetan literally means "anengulfing wave or flood of splendor and power."

[70]

Yuthok

et al.

(1997: p. 46) elucidate the intimate connection of the mindstream, initiation and mandala:It is only through initiation that the blessings of... a mandala may be stamped on the individual'smindstream. Initiation can be given and received only when the time, location and circumstances areappropriate. Only an enlightened, undisputed master may bestow it. The initiation is not given to largecrowds of people. It may be received only by disciples who are receptive by virtue of their faith anddevotion. If the transmission is successful, disciples will experience it at some level. This may bephysical, mental or verbal. People who receive the physical form of blessing sometimes move about andshake. Those who receive verbal blessings may utter all sorts of mantras that they never heard before,which block out their perception of normal sounds. When the mindstream is blessed, the mind is

Mindstream300inundated with a new vision of reality. Initiations normally rely on an external mandala, usually paintedin sand or on cloth. Once a disciple is initiated, he must re-initiate himself daily through regular practice.Eventually, this will lead him or her to realisation.

[71]

Sādhana

Kunsang,

et al.

(2008: p. 94) render the following dialogue between Yeshe Tsogyal and Padmasambhāva:Lady Tsogyal asked the Lotus-Born master: What is the dividing line between mind and mind-essence?The master replied:

Mind

(

sem

) is the formative thinking.

Mind-essence

(

semnyi

) is free of thinkingand mental doing. When experiencing this essence to be your stream-of-being, interrupt your mind'sthought activity and let it be, uncontrived and as it naturally is. This quiet and vividly awake state, freeof any mental doing, is the vital point of naturally clearing the mind itself. Tsogyal, this advice of utmostimportance, I give to you.

[72]

In the

Discourse on Mindfulness

(Pāli:

Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta

) located within the

Majjhima Nikāya

of the Pāli canon,Buddha is rendered as foregrounding "mindfulness" or the enduring presence of the immediacy of experience and afoundational practice to Buddhist spiritual discipline and a preliminary to

śamatha

and

vipaśyanā

. Fenner

[73]

provides an accessible point of entry to

satipaṭṭhāna

sādhana

:In this meditative practice, we learn to recognize and observe the individual components that make upthe full range of human experience. The exercise is to attend to the different processes and phenomenathat occur in the here-and-now as we are sitting in meditative posture or engaged in the various activitiesof our lives. This involves systematically observing our experience to find out what is there.The experience of

satipaṭṭhāna

sādhana

provides the outer, coarse experience of the mindstream or the flow of representation and mentation and is intimately connected with the technical term "

sotāpanna

" (Pāli). Ponlop

[74]

clearly charts the developmental relationship of the

sādhanas

of

śamatha

and

vipaśyanā

:The ways these two aspects of meditation are practiced is that one begins with the practice of

shamatha

;on the basis of that, it becomes possible to practice

vipashyana

or

lhagthong

. Through one's practrice of

vipashyana

being based on and carried on in the midst of

shamatha

, one eventually ends up practicing aunification of

shamatha

and

vipashyana

. The unification leads to a very clear and direct experience of the nature of all things. This brings one very close to what is called the absolute truth.In the context of the skillful mindstream doctrine, this "absolute truth" is cognate with the mindstream substrate, thebase or foundation of mind, lucidity and consciousness and is known in the Nyingmapa and Bonpo traditions of

Dzogchen

as the "clear light" (Wylie:

'od gsal

) also rendered as "inner radiance" and "luminosity".Buddhist and Hindu tantric

sādhana

, and particularly that entwined heritage promulgated by the

mahāsiddha

,involves the

sādhaka

"generating a linkage"

kye-rim

between their mindstream with that of a

guru

or

yidam

as aprecursor to "fully aspecting"

dzog-rim

their

yidam

and

iṣṭa-deva

and their "spiritual personality".

[75]

Themindstream and the imaginal interiority of visualization are employed in the

kye-rim

mode of meditative trance

sādhana

and the internal construction of the buddhafield, mandala and refuge tree.Gyatso (1998: p. 27) translates Jigme Lingpa's autobiographical work,

Dancing Moon in the Water

(

Chudai Garken

;Wylie:

chu-zla'i gar-mkhan

) that foregrounds dream yoga

sādhana

:Then, again while sleeping for a bit,through the force of the blessingfrom realizing the heart-mind continuum,the conceptual thoughts of the ground-of-allwoke as the Dharma body.I became absorbedin the spectacle of empty radiant light,

Mindstream301a manifestation without conceptions.Then it spread,moved into an external manifestation,and I saw,in the awareness-radiationof vision-producing radiant light,several self-produced patternson the surface of a rockshined upon by the sun.

[76]

Lati, Zahler and Hopkins (1983, 1997: pp. 24

–

25)through the institutionalized lens of the Gelugpa and theirgraduated and developmental "stages of the path" (Tibetan:

lamrim

), frame the

sādhana

that Buddha employed toextinguish that which was unwholesome in his mental continuum and mention:

artha

,

maitri

,

karuṇā

,

bodhisattva

,

bodhi

,

śūnyatā

,

pāramitā

, five paths,

bhūmi

and

dharma

:...Buddha...came to discard his own welfare (

don, artha

) and to have concern for the welfare of others;and he cultivated love (

byams pa, maitri

) and compassion (

snying rje, karuṇā

), which served as the rootfor the special mind, the Bodhisattva attitude. Bodhisattva (

byang chub sems dpa'

) means "hero withrespect to contemplating enlightenment (

byang chub, bodhi

)." Thus, he changed his original attitude of cherishing himself and discarding others to that of cherishing others and discarding his own welfare. Healso meditated on emptiness (

stong pa nyid, śūnyatā

). Through cultivating in union the wisdom realizingemptiness and the special Bodhisattva attitude, the altruisticmindof enlightenment, andthrough accompanying these practices with the six perfections (

phar phyin, pāramitā

) - giving (

sbyin pa, dāna

),ethics (

tshul khrims, śīla

), patience (

bzod pa, kṣānti

), effort (

brtson grus, vīrya

), concentration (

bsamgtan, dhyāna

), and wisdom (

she rab, prajñā

) - he ascended the five paths (

lam, mārga

) - the paths of accumulation (

tshogs lam, saṃbhāramārga

), preparation (

prayogamārga, sbyor lam

), seeing (

mthonglam, darśanamārga

), meditation (

sgom lam, bhāvanāmārga

), and no more learning (

mi slob lam,aśaikṣamārga

) - and the ten grounds (

sa, bhūmi

) and completed the collections of merit (

bsod nams, puṇya

) and exalted wisdom (

ye shes, jñāna

). He was able to extinguish all faults in his own mentalcontinuum (

rgyud, saṃtāna

) and to accomplish all auspicious attributes. He was able to achieve thewisdom that knows phenomena (

chos, dharma

) and their status, and when he did this, he became aBuddha. Thus, a Buddha is not someone who is produced causelessly; ...[but] is produced in dependenceon causes.

[77]

In an unknown (though insightful) commentator's purport to Patanjali's Yoga Sutras Sutra I.34, meditation on thebreath (

prāṇāyāma

) is linked to the mindstream:Thus the outflow of the breath, being associated with release, it is used to release the negative energy,thoughts, and emotions which interrupt the Divine mind-stream. Since breath is related to our basicenergy, in this light then, we can also understand how we can can regulate the cit-prana and soothe andclarify the mind by bringing our awareness back to the exhalation of the breath and the regulation of thebreath. This will bring freshness and clarification to the mindstream.

[78]

When His Holiness the Dalai Lama is asked "what is the nature of the mindstream that reincarnates from lifetime tolifetime?" (1997) he answers making reference to the soul, continuum, the Sakya master Rendawa (Wylie:

red mda

’

-pa

), the composite of body and mind, the aggregates, the store consciousness, and the Mind-Only school, asfollows:If one understands the term "soul" as a continuum of individuality from moment to moment, fromlifetime to lifetime, then one can say that Buddhism also accepts a concept of soul; there is a kind of continuum of consciousness. From that point of view, the debate on whether or not there is a soulbecomes strictly semantic. However, in the Buddhist doctrine of selflessness, or "no soul" theory, the

Mindstream302understanding is that there is no eternal, unchanging, abiding, permanent self called "soul." That is whatis being denied in Buddhism.Buddhism does not deny the continuum of consciousness. Because of this, we find some Tibetanscholars, such as the Sakya master Rendawa, who accept that there is such a thing as self or soul, the"kangsak ki dak" (Tib.

gang zag gi bdag

). However, the same word, the "kangsak ki dak", the self, orperson, or personal self, or identity, is at the same time denied by many other scholars.We find diverse opinions, even among Buddhist scholars, as to what exactly the nature of self is, whatexactly that thing or entity is that continues from one moment to the next moment, from one lifetime tothe next lifetime. Some try to locate it within the aggregates, the composite of body and mind. Someexplain it in terms of a designation based on the body and mind composite, and so on.... One of thedivisions of [the "Mind-Only"] school maintains there is a special continuum of consciousness calledalayavijnana which is the fundamental consciousness.

[79]

Waldron (2007) links Vasubandhu,

bhavachakra

,

kleśa

and karma:Vasubandhu describes this classic account of cyclic causality in terms of one's "mind stream": "the mindstream (santana) increases gradually by the mental afflictions (klesa) and by actions (karma), and goesagain to the next world. In this way the circle of existence is without beginning (anadibhavacakraka)."(AKBh III 19a-d; Poussin, tome 2, pp. 57-59; Shastri, pp. 433-34.)

[4]

Vajranatha (2001) states:When we look inside of ourselves and just observe, we find that there is only a streamof consciousness(T. shes-rgyud, S. vijnana-santana). The Buddha introduced this term long before William James didsome hundred years ago. When we say "my mind", this refers not to a thing or a vestment. Yet thisstream of consciousness has a continuity and an individuality. Our stream of consciousness is separatefrom those of other people. There are individual streams of consciousness and individual mentalprocesses. We are not all One Mind. If we were, as soon as one of us realized something, all of us wouldsimultaneously realize it.

[80]

Atiyoga

Craig,

et al.

. (1998: p. 476) convey a 'stream of consciousness' or 'mindstream' as a procession of mote events of consciousness (C) with algebraic notation C

1

, C

2

and C

3

thus to demonstrate the immediacy of nondual awarenessthrough a

Reductio ad absurdum

argument:That nondual awareness is the only possible

self

-awareness is defended by a

reductio

argument. If afurther awareness C

2

, having C

1

as content, is required for self-awareness, then since there would be noawareness of C

2

without awareness C

3

,

ad infinitum

, there could be no self-awareness, that is, unless theself is to be understood as limited to past awareness only. For self-awareness to be an immediateawareness, self-awareness has to be nondual.

[81]

In the above quotation in the Tibetan nomenclature of the 'mind[stream]' or 'continuum' (Wylie:

rgyud

), 'nondualawareness' is 'Rigpa' (Wylie:

rig pa

) and 'self-awareness' (Wylie:

rang rig

) is 'Rangrig'. Rigpa is a contraction of "rang rig pa" which includes both

rig pa

and

rang rig

(Wylie, rang rig

[82]

). Rigpa is key in the discourse of Atiyoga.In general Himalayan spiritual discourse,

Atiyoga

is held to be the peak of the Dharma of theNine Vehicles for boththe Nyingmapa and Bonpo and is comparable to the complete realization of

Mahāmudrā

for the

Sarma

traditions.Though this hierarchical view is the general paradigm,

Atiyoga

is also the unity, fulfillment and primordial base of all the other vehicles. It is commonly held that

Atiyoga

speaks its own language and this is impenetrable for thosewho have not had empowerments, transmissions (Tibetan:

lung

) and direct experience, establishing the clear view of the nature of the mindstream. This is known as the "pointing out instruction" according to Namkha'i. In the othervehicles there is the doctrine of inter- and intra-permeable mindstreams, that support the entwining

nirmānakāya

or

Mindstream303

tulku

lineages of the re-embodiment and "treasure" (Wylie:

gTer

) traditions. Padma Translation Committee'srendering of an embedded quotation of one of the famed "Twelve Vajra Laughs" (drawn from the

Pile of JewelsTantra

; Wylie:

Rin-po-che spungs-pa' rgyud

which is numbered as one of the seventeen tantras) cited in the

Nelug Dzö

one of Longchenpa's "Seven Treasures" (Wylie:

mDzod bdun

)

is

clearly an example of the technical twilightlanguage of

Atiyoga

and the pedigree of the skillful doctrine of the mindstream:Listen further, O Vajra of Speech! Behold the nature of phenomena, empty and all-pervasive timelessawareness. How marvelous

—

it is unborn and abides timelessly, coemergent with being itself. Even if aperson were to seize a sharp weapon and slay all beings at once, that person's mindstream would still befree of benefit or harm. Ha! Ha!

[83]

In a Peircean or de Sassurian semiotic analysis of the semantic signifier "mindstream", the signifier mindstreamdenotes an ineffable signified of an open and pervasive mystery: To limit the limitless by stating that it may notsubject itself to boundaries or limit itself by grace is bunk. Sky is a limitless limit.

Atiyoga

is a verb.

Atiyoga

: "

ati

" or"

adi

" a Sanskrit term that holds the semantic field "beginning", "wellspring", "origination"; and "

yoga

" a Sanskritterm that may be rendered most appropriately into English in its full semantic analogue, "comm

union

". Therefore,the verb or process of

Atiyoga

is "to commune" with the primordiality of the unknowable and pregnant "void" or"zero" (Sanskrit:

śūnya

).The perfect infinitive tense "to commune" was employed toconvey an embedded philosophical view of the viewless Great Perfection.Void, isEmptiness, is Sky, is Space, is Zero: a garland of analogues. In the Dharmic traditions, Dharma has a 5000 year tradition of being conveyed and rarefied by realizationforded through analysis and grammar of alphanumeric systems and semiology both esoteric and exoteric. Casein point in

Atiyoga

, the final or thirteenth

bhumi

of the "absolute bodhichitta", being the

varnamala

, the "garland of

bīja

. "

Atiyoga

" begins and ends with ཨ "Ah". For the Nyingma who self-identify as the

ngagpas

,

siddhas

and

sādhakas

of "secret mantra", "Ah" is the

bīja

mantra of the nature of the mindstream of Samantabhadra. Unlike the

Dzogchen

tradition of the Nyingma, the Bonpo

Dzogchenpa

have a sophisticated technical and iconographiclanguage and semiology for limiting that which cannot be limited.

Varṇamālā (Garland of Phonemes)

Varṇa

(Sanskrit) holds the semantic field "colour", "class", "phoneme", "syllable","letter";

mālā

(Sanskrit) holds thesemantic field "garland","ley", "wreath", "prayer beads", "rosary". Varṇamālā denotes the alphabet of Devanagari, that has come to be common for Sanskrit post-medieval India. Indeed,Varṇamālā not only denotes the set of phonemes of Sanskrit and languages evolved from it, but denotes the glyphs in the abugida scripts for suchlanguages. Rongzompa realised the 'thirteenth bhumi of Mantrayana' which may alsobe rendered in Englishas "Chakra of Letters" (Sanskrit:

Varṇamālā

; Wylie:

yi ge 'khor lo tshogs chen gyi sa

). The term Deva+Naga+ri isconstructed from a conjunction of

deva

"divinity" and nāga "serpent", and that snakes often form a "circular"garland-like shape, refer Ourorboros, and are evident throughout Dharmic iconography as girdles, malas, garlands,torques, armbands, etc., as investiture of adornment are 'symbolic attributes' (Tibetan:

phyag mtshan

[84]

).Devanagari seceded from Brāhmī script which is even more visually serpentine.Conze (1980: p. 12) states:For the last two thousand years Buddhism has mainly flourished in rice-growing countries and littleelsewhere. In addition, and that is much harder to explain, it has spread only in those countries whichhad previously had a cult of Serpents or Dragons, and never made headway in those parts of the worldwhich view the killing of dragons as a meritorious deed or blame serpents for mankind's ills.

[85]

In addition to the circular formation of snakes (and dragons), their boon as holders and givers of wisdom as well astheir bane as bringers of deception and illusion, is evident throughout folklore of the human condition and reveals thefundamental qualitative dichotomy of language and code as both conduits of information and noise. The inherentflexibility and elongation of the snake-form, lends itself to making rudimentrary shapes and forms, and for theancient Vedic tradition and its cultural tributaries of the Indo-european language family, is the font of archetypal

Mindstream304signification. Nāga as concealers and revealers of 'treasures' (Tibetan: Terma) are endemic in Terma literature, as areDakini. Nagarjuna received the

Prajnaparamita

from the Nāga. In discussing the thoughtform Varṇamālā, particular'energetic signatory glyphs' (Tibetan:

gter ston gter btags

) are inseparable from the tradition of Tertöns.

[86]

Khanna (2003: p. 21) links mantras and yantras to thoughtforms:Mantras, the Sanskrit syllables inscribed on yantras, are essentially 'thought forms' representingdivinities or cosmic powers, which exert their influence by means of sound-vibrations.

[87]

In the Dharmic traditions, all phenomena are essentially the 'formation of vibration and resonance' (Sanskrit:

namarupa

). Mookerjee and Khanna (1977: p. 33) state how all form arises from the Aum:The PrimalSound as the monosyllabic mantra Oṃ is the basis of cosmic evolution. All the elemental sound-formsof mantras emanate from this eternal sound. Sound and form are interdependent, and everyform is a vibration of a certain density; conversely, every sound has a visual equivalent. Sound is thereflex of form and form is the product of sound. All that is animate and inanimate are vibrations of aparticular frequency. All the mantras have their colour forms, and when a mantra is pronounced properlyits visual correlates begin to manifest. The dynamic power-pattern rooted in sound by which it isrevealed is called a yantra.

[88]

Hence, all phenomena are constituted by Bīja, known in Tibetan as

sprul pa cho 'phrul gyi yi ge

, "spontaneouslyemergent magical phonemes/letters/symbols", which is another way of perceiving the all-pervasive buddha-nature,the 'Thirteenth Bhumi' or the 'Third Bhumi of Enlightenment' (Tibetan:

yi ge 'khor lo tshogs chen

; "the bhumi wherethe Universe is present as a rotating procession of spell-letters").

[89]

Notes

[1]Bhikkhu, Thanissaro (1996).

No-self or Not-self?

. (unpaginated). Source: (http://www.

dharmaweb.

org/index.

php/No-self_or_Not-self?)(accessed: December 5, 2007)[2]Sgam-po-pa (author) Guenther, Herbert V. (trans) (1959, 1986).

The Jewel Ornament of Liberation

. Boston, Massachusetts, USA: ShambhalaPublications., Inc. ISBN 1-57062-614-6(pbk.) p.27[3]Rinpoche, Dzogchen (2007).

Taming the Mindstream

in Wolter, Doris (ed.) "Losing the Clouds, Gaining the Sky: Buddhism and the NaturalMind." Wisdom Publications. ISBN 0-86171-359-1 p.82-83. Source: (http://books.

google.

com.

au/books?id=9_9tW2cHtOcC&pg=PA81&lpg=PA81&dq=mindstream&source=web&ots=zVowKgfwAK&sig=m601WoY8B5h-3y4pgC9k36tDT-c&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result) (accessed: July 29, 2008)[4]Waldron, William S. (undated).

Buddhist Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Thinking about 'Thoughts without a Thinker'

. Source: (http://www.purifymind.

com/EcologyMindSteps.

htm) (accessed: November 1, 2007)[5]Davids, C.A.F. Rhys (1903). "The Soul-Theory in Buddhism" in

The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland

.Source: (http://ccbs.

ntu.

edu.

tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ENG/rhy.

htm) (accessed: Sunday February 1, 2009), pp. 587-588[6]Nonlocal and atemporal may be resolved into a qualification of omnipresent.[7]The lexical item 'Moment', has been employed in the sense of its etymon "momentum" though the "stream", "array" or "procession" isatemporal and nonlocal.[8]Source: (http://rywiki.

tsadra.

org/index.php/bkod_pa_thig_le) (accessed: January 8, 2008)[9]Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche (2002).

Healing with Form, Energy, and Light

. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications. ISBN 1-55939-176-6.p.82[10]http://books.

google.

com/books?id=Ypsz9qEzZjwC&pg=PA197&dq=yuganaddha&hl=en&ei=Wz_kTLnPFoL88AbG7oCgDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=yuganaddha&f=false[11]Bucknell, Roderick & Stuart-Fox, Martin (1986).

The Twilight Language: Explorations in Buddhist Meditation and Symbolism

. CurzonPress: London. ISBN 0-312-82540-4[12]Berzin, Alexander (2007). English Glossary of Buddhist Terms (http://www.

berzinarchives.

com/web/en/about/glossary/glossary.html_80737387.

html) (accessed July 8, 2010)[13]Keown, Damien (ed.) with Hodge, Stephen; Jones, Charles; Tinti, Paola (2003).

A Dictionary of Buddhism

. Great Britain, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press. P.62. ISBN 0-19-860560-9[14]Source: (http://www.

dharmafellowship.org/library/essays/buddhist-glossary.htm#santana) (accessed: December 13, 2007)[15]Berzin, Alexander (2002; 2007).

Making Sense of Tantra

. Source: (http://www.

berzinarchives.

com/web/en/archives/e-books/ unpublished_manuscripts/making_sense_tantra/pt1/making_sense_tantra_01.

html) (accessed: December 13, 2007)[16]Dharma Dictionary (http://rywiki.tsadra.

org/index.

php/Main_Page) (28 December 2005). Source: (http://rywiki.

tsadra.

org/index.php/thugs_rgyud) (accessed: July 17, 2008)

Mindstream305

[17]Dharma Dictionary (http://rywiki.tsadra.

org/index.

php/Main_Page) (4 October 2006). Source: (http://rywiki.

tsadra.

org/index.

php/ thugs) (accessed: July 17, 2008)[18]Lachs and Talisse write,

The "stream" or "flow" metaphor can be found in descriptions of mind and reality dating back to anumber of ancient sources, including the fragments attributed to the presocratic thinker Heraclitus, theUpanishadic writings of the Hindu canon, and various Buddhist and Taoist texts and commentaries.However, it was the American psychologist and philosopher William James who gave the express acertain technical significance and galvanized its contemporary usage.

(Lachs, John and Robert Talisse, eds. 2008.

American Philosophy: An Encyclopedia

(http://books.

google.

com/books?id=lXX1vfwDelUC).Routledge, p. 737.)[19]Wallace, B. Allan (2003). "Introduction: Buddhism and Science--Breaking Down the Barriers." Source: (http://www.

alanwallace.

org/ Introduction to Buddhism &Science.

pdf) (accessed: Wednesday September 23, 2009) p.6[20]"Moving Mind" (http://www.pranayoga-la.

com/Media/YogaSutras.doc)[21]Gyatso, Tenzin (author); Jinpa, Thupten (translator) & Wallace, B. Alan (translator)(2003). "Understanding and Transforming the Mind" inWallace, B. Alan (editor, 2003).

Buddhism & Science: Breaking New Ground

. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-12335-3(pbk.: alk. paper) p.97[22]Rinpoche, Sogyal (1994).

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

. London, UK: Rider. ISBN 0 7126 5752 5 (paperback). p.73[23]1986: p. 112-113[24]D iii 105. See Vishwanath Pandey, Early Buddhist Conception of Consciousness. In

Bharatiya Vidya

29 (1972), p. 68, note 95.[25]As quoted in Beyer,

The Buddhist Experience

, p.157. See also Evans-Wentz,

Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines

, p.129.,[26]

Calm and Clear

,

Mi-pham 'Jam-dbyangs rnam-gyal rgya-mtsho

, transl. by Tarthang Tülku (Emeryville, California: Dharma, 1973), p.105.[27]See Garma C. C. Chang,

Teachings of Tibetan Yoga

(New York: University Books, 1963), p.35.[28]Tarthang,

Calm and Clear

, p.77.[29]Tarthang,

Openness Mind

, p.67.[30]David-Neel,

Magic and Mystery in Tibet

, p.245.[31]Bain, Alexander (1855).

Senses and the Intellect

(http://books.

google.com/books?id=vZcXAAAAYAAJ). Appleton, p. 380.[32]James, 1890, vol. 1, p. 239. (Emphasis in original.)[33]James, 1890, vol. 1, p. 196.[34]Titchener, Edward B. (1909)

A Text-book of Psychology

(http://books.google.com/books?id=iHR9AAAAMAAJ). Macmillan, p.19.[35]Koslowski, Peter (author, editor) (2003).

Philosophy bridging the world religions.

Volume 5 of Discourse of the world religions. Springer.ISBN 1-4020-0648-9, 9781402006487. Source: (http://books.

google.

com.

au/books?id=Qzf2gdWjtHcC&pg=PA98&lpg=PA98&dq=Mo-ho+chih-kuan&source=bl&ots=oXJTw_0ZUf&sig=GJ0pt3ti_bNRGdm8701awR0ABjA&hl=en&ei=9yvQS9PmBMGGkAWTy5zsDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCYQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Mo-hochih-kuan&f=false) (accessed: Thursday April 22, 2010), p.67, note 1[36]Koslowski, Peter (author, editor) (2003).

Philosophy bridging the world religions.

Volume 5 of Discourse of the world religions. Springer.ISBN 1-4020-0648-9, 9781402006487. Source: (http://books.

google.

com.

au/books?id=Qzf2gdWjtHcC&pg=PA98&lpg=PA98&dq=Mo-ho+chih-kuan&source=bl&ots=oXJTw_0ZUf&sig=GJ0pt3ti_bNRGdm8701awR0ABjA&hl=en&ei=9yvQS9PmBMGGkAWTy5zsDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCYQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Mo-hochih-kuan&f=false) (accessed: Thursday April 22, 2010), p.74[37]King, Richard (1998). "Vijnaptimatrata and the Abhidharma context of early Yogacara" in

Asian Philosophy

. Vol. 8 No. 1 Mar, 1998.Source: (http://ccbs.

ntu.

edu.

tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ADM/richard.

htm) (accessed: Sunday January 11, 2008) pp.5-18.[38]Chatterji, Durgacharan (1931).

The Problem of Knowledge and the Four Schools of Later Buddhism.

Annals of the Bhandarkar OrientalResearch Institute, Poona. vol.XII 12:3, 1931.04. p.205-215. Source: (http://ccbs.

ntu.

edu.

tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ENG/dg.

htm) (accessed:Sunday January 11, 2009) pp.206-207[39]Karunadasa, Y. (1999, 2000). "The Buddhist Critique of Sassatavada and Ucchedavada: The Key to a proper Understanding of the Originand the Doctrines of early Buddhism." from: Karunadasa, Y. (1999, 2000).

The Middle Way

, U.K., vol. 74 & 75.[40]Myanmar Piṭaka Association Editorial Committee (1993).

Nidāna Saṃyutta: Group of Related Discourses on Causal Factors from Nidānavagga Saṃyutta: Division Containing Groups of Discourses on Causal Factors

. Shakti Nagar, Delhi, India: Sri Satguru Publications.ISBN 81-7030-367-2. p.35[41]Mañjuśrīmitra (undated).

Bodhicittabhavana

. NB: An English rendering of this text by Kunpal Tulku (2005) is entitled

The Cultivation of Enlightened Mind

. This is an English rendering from the Tibetan translation of Sri Simha and the Tibetan translator Bhikshu Vairocanaraksita.The original text is no longer extant. Source: (http://www.dharmafellowship.org/library/texts/cultivation-of-enlightened-mind.

htm#two)(accessed: November 28, 2007)[42]Lusthaus, Dan (undated).

What is and isn't Yogācāra.

Source: (http://www.acmuller.

net/yogacara/articles/intro-uni.

htm) (accessed:December 4, 2007)[43]Capriles, Elías (2004).

Clear Discrimination of Views Pointing at the Definitive Meaning: the Four Philosophical Schools of the SutrayanaTraditionally Taught in Tibet with Reference to the Dzogchen Teachings

: p. 35. Source: (http://webdelprofesor.

ula.

ve/humanidades/elicap/ es/uploads/Biblioteca/philosophical_schools.

pdf) (accessed: January 15, 2008)

Mindstream306

[44]Rinpoche, Dzogchen (2007).

Taming the Mindstream

in Wolter, Doris (ed.) "Losing the Clouds, Gaining the Sky: Buddhism and the NaturalMind." Wisdom Publications. ISBN 0-86171-359-1 p.84 Source: (http://books.

google.

com.

au/books?id=9_9tW2cHtOcC&pg=PA81&lpg=PA81&dq=mindstream&source=web&ots=zVowKgfwAK&sig=m601WoY8B5h-3y4pgC9k36tDT-c&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result) (accessed: July 29, 2008)[45]Waldron, William S. (2003). "Common Ground, Common Cause: Buddhism and Science on the Afflictions of Identity" in Wallace, B. Alan(editor, 2003).

Buddhism & Science: Breaking New Ground

. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-12335-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)p.178[46]AKBh:III 19a-d: Yathākṣepaṃ kramād vṛddhaḥ santānaḥ kleśakarmabhiḥ / paralokaṃ punaryāti...ityanādibhavacakrakam[47]Source: (http://www.

sub.

uni-goettingen.de/ebene_1/fiindolo/gretil/1_sanskr/6_sastra/3_phil/buddh/bsa059_u.

htm) (accessed:Wednesday October 28, 2009). There is an English translation of this work by Gupta (1969: pp.81-121) which is a rendering of Stcherbatsky'swork from the Russian: Gupta, Harish C. (1969).

Papers of Th. Stcherbatsky

. Calcutta: Indian Studies Past and Present. (translated fromRussian by Harish C. Gupta).[48]Dunne, John D. (2004).

Foundations of Dharmakīrti's philosophy

. Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism. Wisdom Publications. ISBN0-86171-184-X, 9780861711840. Source: (http://books.google.com/books?id=Z1p4V4_lnY4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=dharmakirti&ei=W7PfS-X4Ao7ikwSnlvAC&cd=1#v=onepage&q=dharmakirti&f=false) (accessed: Monday May 4, 2010), p.1[49]Welwood, 2000[50]2000: unpaginated[51]Chodron, Thubten (1991).

Basic Buddhist Topics: Mind, Rebirth, Cyclic Existence and Enlightenment

(transcript). Seattle: DharmaFriendship Foundation. Source: http://www.thubtenchodron.org/GradualPathToEnlightenment/LR_003_BasicTopics_May91.

pdf (accessed: Sunday March 25, 2007)[52]Hawter, Pende (1995).

Healing: A Tibetan Buddhist Perspective

. http://www.

sacred-texts.

com/bud/tib/heal_tib.

htm (accessed: SaturdayJanuary 13, 2007)[53]Morrell, Peter (1999).

The Three Poisons And The Three Jewels: An Outline Of The Buddhist Schools

. Source: (http://www.

homeoint.

org/ morrell/buddhism/outline.

htm) (accessed: Saturday January 13, 2007)[54]Mullin, 1982: 53[55]The Universe here is qualified by Rawson (1991: p.9) who states that even before 400 CE: "...the classic

Lotus Sutra

had developed theintuition that the universe is unknowably vast, containing millions upon millions of cosmoses and worlds 'numberless as the sand-grains of theGanges river', all continuously arising from and falling back into an indefinable Ultimate." In this context the "indefinable Ultimate" may beequated with dharmakaya. In addition, the term Multiverse or Metaverse may be more apt, though still in the sense of the etymology of theUniverse in 'revolving as one'.[56]A footnote in the English rendering of Mañjuśrīmitra's

Bodhicittabhavana

, by Kunpal Tulku (2005) entitled

The Cultivation of Enlightened Mind

states:

In Buddhist terminology the Universe is referred to as a Tri-sahasra-mahasahasra-dhatu. This describesa Universe consisting of galaxies of (1000)3 x 1000 world-systems with an almost unimaginable eventhorizon. In every direction these world-systems stretch out, some circling distant uninhabited hot stellarnebula, others rich in sentient beings. When we gaze upwards at the stars, we are gazing towardcountless civilizations spanning across the shoreless ocean of the night sky. And yet what we see is onlya fraction of the Universe as such. Source: (http://www.

dharmafellowship.

org/library/texts/ cultivation-of-enlightened-mind.htm#two) (accessed: November 28, 2007)

[57]Patrul Rinpoche

et al.

(1994: p.407) define 'Cosmos of a billion universes' (Tibetan:

stong gsum

) as:

...a cosmos composed of one billion (1000

3

) universes like ours and corresponding to the area of activityof one Buddha.

Source: Rinpoche, Patrul (author); Brown, Kerry (ed.); and Sharma, Sima (ed.)(1994).

The Words of My Perfect Teacher

(Tibetan title:

kunzang lama'i shelung

). Translated by the Padmakara Translation Group. With a forward by the Dalai Lama. San Francisco, California,USA: HarperCollins

Publishers

. ISBN 0-06-066449-5 (cloth: alk. paper). p.407[58]Orofino (1990: p. 82) in discussing the Bönpo Dzogchenpa view of

kun-gzhi

(Tibetan: Kun (http://rywiki.

tsadra.

org/index.

php/kun)-gzhi (http://rywiki.

tsadra.

org/index.php/gzhi)) (the "all-base") renders into English an extract from the

Kun-gzhi'i zhal-shes sgrong-ma

, aphilosophical tract from the

Zhang-zhung snyan-rgyud

, the discourse of Tapihritsa who in a vision, appeared to

sNang-bzher lod-po

, who (byimplication) transcribed the discourse (fol. 1a et seq.):

'Here will be given the oral teaching which removes doubts on the natural state of

kun-gzhi

: like the sky,it may appear to be divided into external and internal. Some people with limited minds think that theWisdom Mind is found within one's own mind but does not pervade external objects. The space of thesky, for example, totally and uniformly pervades all phenomenal existence without any differencebetween inside and outside, but in constructing a house one separates internal from external space, andone gives this internal space a form, be it square, triangular, oval or round, according to the space the

Mindstream307house takes. In the same way the Wisdom Mind totally and uniformly pervades

saṃsāra

and

nirvāṇa

,without a division of internal and external. There is no separation of external and internal within spacein itself: just as it pervades the external, so it also pervades the internal. Thus the mind of living beingsdistinguishes dualistically an original mind and an internal one. But because internal and external do notexist, neitherdo these limits. Self-originated wisdom, just as it pervades the consciousness of everyindividual also pervades all phenomenal objective existence and the entire external universe. It expandsin all directions without a centre or a periphery, having no inside or outside.' Orofino, Giacomella(translation & commentary) (1990).

Sacred Tibetan Teachings on Death and Liberation: Texts from themost Ancient Traditions of Tibet.

Preface by Namkhai Norbu. Bridport, Dorset, U.K.: Prism Press. ISBN1 85327 049 0. p.82.

[59]http://rywiki.

tsadra.

org/index.

php/Ati_Yoga[60]http://rywiki.

tsadra.

org/index.

php/shin_tu_rnal_'byor[61]http://rywiki.

tsadra.

org/index.

php/shin_tu[62]http://rywiki.

tsadra.

org/index.

php/rnal_'byor[63]http://oblako-9.

gorodok.

ca/images/photos/bonchildren/deities/Tapihritsa01.

jpg[64]Capriles, Elias (2008).

Beyond Being, Beyond Mind, Beyond History: a Dzogchen-founded Metatranspersonal, Metapostmodern Philosophyand Psychology for Survival and an Age of Communion.

ula.

ve/ humanidades/elicap/en/uploads/Biblioteca/bb-bm-bh.

part-ii.pdf) (accessed: January 14, 2009) p.323[65]Lusthaus, Dan (2002).

Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism and the Ch'eng Wei-shih Lun

.Routledge. ISBN 0-7007-1186-4. Source: (http://books.

google.

com/books?id=IeiwsT-XqwQC&pg=PA473&lpg=PA473&dq=vasanas+yogacara&source=web&ots=3J2oEudB6L&sig=WG_DFoVNm2Prn3wp38TEcf2Mo4I&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result#PPA473,M1) (accessed: January 13, 2009) p.472[66]Lusthaus, Dan (2002).

Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism and the Ch'eng Wei-shih Lun

.Routledge. ISBN 0-7007-1186-4. Source: (http://books.

google.

com/books?id=IeiwsT-XqwQC&pg=PA473&lpg=PA473&dq=vasanas+yogacara&source=web&ots=3J2oEudB6L&sig=WG_DFoVNm2Prn3wp38TEcf2Mo4I&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result#PPA474,M1) (accessed: January 13, 2009) p.474[67]Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche (2002).

Healing with Form, Energy, and Light

. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications. ISBN1-55939-176-6. p.10[68]Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche (2002).

Healing with Form, Energy, and Light

. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications. ISBN1-55939-176-6. p.117[69]Scheidegger, Daniel (2007). "Different Sets of Light-Channels in the Instruction Series of Rdzogs chen" in

Revue d

’

Etudes Tibétaines

.Source: (http://www.

digitalhimalaya.

com/collections/journals/ret/pdf/ret_12_03.pdf) (accessed: Tuesday January 13, 2009)[70]Fremantle, Francesca (2001).

Luminous Emptiness: Understanding the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Boston: Shambala Publications. ISBN1-57062-450-X, p. 48[71]Yuthok, Choedak (1997).

Lamdre: Dawn of Enlightenment.

(Transcribed and edited by Pauline Westwood with valued assistance from OtRastsaphong, Rob Small, Brett Wagland and Whitethorn. Cover Design: Rob Small) Canberra, Australia: Gorum Publications. ISBN 09587085 0 9. p. 46 Source: (http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/lamdre.pdf) (accessed: January 3, 2008)[72]Kunsang, Erik Pema (tr.) & Schmidt, Marcia Binder (tr.), Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (contributor), Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyal(2008).

Treasures from Juniper Ridge: The Profound Instructions of Padmasambhava to the Dakini Yeshe Tsogyal

. North Atlantic Books:p. 94. Source: (http://books.

google.

com/books?id=lLB2vBNJZhcC&pg=PA94&lpg=PA94&dq=stream-of-being+shri+singha&source=bl&ots=uNlbyqMDO2&sig=Ev_Yp5wix3oluRmsLS6QXkKSMzI&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result)(accessed: Tuesday January 13, 2009)[73]Fenner, Peter (1994). "Spiritual Inquiry in Buddhism" in

ReVision

; Vol. 17, No. 2 Fall. 1994. Pp.13-25. Source: (http://ccbs.

ntu.

edu.

tw/ FULLTEXT/JR-ADM/peter.

htm) (accessed: September 14, 2008)[74]Ray, Reginald A. (Ed.)(2004).

In the Presence of Masters: Wisdom from 30 Contemporary Tibetan Buddhist Teachers

. Boston,Massachusetts, USA: Shambala. ISBN 1-57062-849-1 (pbk.: alk. paper) p.76.[75]Dowman, Keith (1984).

Introduction to Masters of Mahamudra

. Source: (http://keithdowman.

net/essays/siddhas.

htm) (accessed:December 4, 2007)[76]Gyatso, Janet (1998).

Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary; a Translation and Study of Jigme Lingpa's'Dancing Moon in the Water' and 'Ḍākki's Grand Secret-Talk

'. Princeton, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01110-9(cloth: alk. paper) p.27[77]Rinbochay, Lati (orator); Zahler, Leah (editor); & Hopkins, Jeffrey (translator) (1983, 1997). 'Lati Rinbochay's Oral Presentation of theConcentrations and Formless Absorptions' in Rinbochay, Lati; Rinbochay, Denma Lochö; Zahler, Leah (translator); & Hopkins, Jeffrey(translator) (1983, 1997).

Meditative States in Tibetan Buddhism

. Somerville, Massachusetts, USA: Wisdom Publications. ISBN0-86171-119-X. pp.24-25[78]Source: (http://www.

rainbowbody.

net/HeartMind/Yogasutra1.htm) (accessed: January 17, 2007)

Mindstream308

[79]Lama, Dalai (1997).

Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a Buddhist Perspective

. Translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa. Snow LionPublications. Source: (http://www.

tysonwilliams.com/archives/ what_is_the_nature_of_the_mindstream_that_reincarnates_from_lifetime_to_lifetime.

html) (accessed: Sunday March 25, 2007)[80]Vajranatha (2001).

Dzogchen and Meditation

. Source: (http://vajranatha.com/teaching/DzogchenMeditation.

htm) (accessed: November1, 2007)[81]Craig, Edward (general editor) (1998).

Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy: Luther to Nifo, Volume 6

. Taylor & Francis. ISBN0-415-07310-3, 9780415073103. Source: (http://books.google.com.

au/books?id=G3UBxqkkCX8C&pg=PA476&dq=ontolog++nondual&hl=en&ei=kufPS-X2J5GTkAWVuq2ACg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false) (accessed: Thursday April 22, 2010), p.476[82]Williams, Paul (1998, 2000).

The Reflexive Nature of Awareness: A Tibetan Madhyamaka Defence

. Delhi, India: Motilal BanarsidassPublishers. ISBN 978-0-7007-1030-0, p.xi[83]Rabjam, Longchen & The Padma Translation Committee (1998).

The Precious Treasury of The Way of Abiding

(Wylie:

Gnas lugs mdzod

).Junction City, California, USA: Padma Publishing. ISBN 1-881847-09-8 (hardback). p.95[84]http://rywiki.

tsadra.

org/index.

php/phyag_mtshan[85]Conze, Edward (1980).

A Short History of Buddhism

. Museum Street, London, U.K.: George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd. ISBN 0 04294109 1[86]Duff, Tony (2000).

Tibetan and Bhutanese Marks and Signs for Inclusion into Tibetan Unicode 3.0.

. Source: (http://www.

tibet.

dk/pktc/ download/TD_Tib_Signs3.

pdf) (accessed: February 17, 2008) pp.6-8[87]Khanna, Madhu (2003).

Yantra: The Tantric Symbol of Cosmic Unity.

Inner Traditions. ISBN 0-89281-132-3 & ISBN 978-0-89281-132-8.p.21[88]Mookerjee, Ajit & Khanna, Madhu (1977; reprinted 2003). The Tantric Way: Art, Science, Ritual. High Holborn, London, U.K.: Thamesand Hudson Ltd. ISBN 0 500 27088 0[89]Guenther, Herbert V. (1972).

Buddhist Philosophy in Theory and Practice

. Viking Press. ISBN 0-14-021392-9 & ISBN 978-0-14-021392-8

References

Print

•Bucknell, Roderick & Stuart-Fox, Martin (1986).

The Twilight Language: Explorations in Buddhist Meditationand Symbolism

. Curzon Press: London. ISBN 0-312-82540-4•Chodron, Thubten (1991).

Basic Buddhist Topics: Mind, Rebirth, Cyclic Existence and Enlightenment

(transcript).Seattle: Dharma Friendship Foundation. Source: http://www.thubtenchodron.

org/ GradualPathToEnlightenment/LR_003_BasicTopics_May91.

pdf (accessed: Sunday March 25, 2007)•Gradinarov, Plamen (2005).

Husserl and Yogacara

. "Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology", Volume 5, Edition1, April 2005. Source: (http://www.

ipjp.org/april2005/gradinarov_5e1.

pdf) (accessed: November 1, 2007)•Guenther, Herbert V. (1956). "Tibetan Buddhism in Western Perspective: The Concept of Mind in BuddhistTantrism."

Journal of Oriental Studies

: 3:261-77.•Gyatso, Janet (1998).

Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary; a Translationand Study of Jigme Lingpa's 'Dancing Moon in the Water' and 'Ḍākki's Grand Secret-Talk

'. Princeton, NewJersey, USA: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01110-9 (cloth: alk. paper)•Hawter, Pende (1995).

Healing: A Tibetan Buddhist Perspective

. http://www.

sacred-texts.

com/bud/tib/ heal_tib.

htm (accessed: Saturday January 13, 2007)•James, William. (1890).

The Principles of Psychology

. New York: Holt.•Lama, Dalai (1997).

Healing Anger: The Power of Patience from a Buddhist Perspective

. Translated by GesheThupten Jinpa. Snow Lion Publications. Source: (http://www.

tysonwilliams.

com/archives/ what_is_the_nature_of_the_mindstream_that_reincarnates_from_lifetime_to_lifetime.

html) (accessed: SundayMarch 25, 2007)•Morrell, Peter (1999).

The Three Poisons And The Three Jewels: An Outline Of The Buddhist Schools

. http:// www.

homeoint.

org/morrell/buddhism/outline.

htm (accessed: Saturday January 13, 2007)•Mullin, Glenn H. (1982).

Selected Works of the Dalai Lama VII

. Snow Lion, USA.•Priestley, Leonard (1999).

Pudgalavāda Buddhism: The Reality of the Indeterminate Self

. Toronto: Centre forSouth Asian Studies, University of Toronto.

Mnemonic310

Mnemonic

Knuckle mnemonic for the number of days in each month of the Gregorian Calendar. Each projecting knuckle representsa 31-day month.

A

mnemonic

( /n

əˈ

m

ɒ

n

ɪ

k/,

[1]

with a silent "m"), or

mnemonic device

, is any learning technique that aidsmemory. To improve long term memory, mnemonic systemsare used to make memorization easier. They do so byincreasing the efficiency of the process of consolidation.Thisprocess involves the conversion of short term memory to longterm memory.Commonly encountered mnemonics are oftenverbal, such as a very short poem or a special word used tohelp a person remember something, particularly lists, but amnemonic may instead be visual, kinesthetic or auditory. Mnemonics rely on associations betweeneasy-to-remember constructs which can be related back to the data that are to be remembered. This is based on theobservation that the human mind much more easily remembers spatial, personal, surprising, physical, sexual orhumorous or otherwise meaningful information, as compared to retrieving arbitrary sequences.The word

mnemonic

is derived from the Ancient Greek word μνημονικός

mnemonikos

("of memory") and is relatedto Mnemosyne ("remembrance"), the name of the goddess of memory in Greek mythology. Both of these words referback to μνημα

mnema

("remembrance").

[2]

Mnemonics in antiquity were most often considered in the context of what is today known as the Art of Memory.The major assumption in antiquity was that there are two sorts of memory: the "natural" memory and the "artificial"memory. The former is inborn, and is the one that everyone uses every day. The artificial memory is one that istrained through learning and practicing a variety of mnemonic techniques. The latter can be used to perform feats of memory that are quite extraordinary, impossible for most people to carry out using the natural memory alone.

First letter mnemonics

One common mnemonic for remembering lists consists of an easily remembered acronym, or phrase with anacronym that is associated with the list items. The idea lends itself well to memorizing hard-to-break passwords aswell. For example, to remember the colours of the rainbow, use the mnemonic "Richard Of York Gave Battle InVain" or the fictitious name "Roy G. Biv". Another one is HOMES to help people remember the names of all of theGreat Lakes (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.) In electronics, color codes are used on somecomponents, with each color representing a specific value (0-9). Numerous mnemonics exist to help remember thesequence of numbers where the first letter of each word represents the first letter of the name of the color for thatnumber. One such mnemonic is "Bill Brown Realized Only Yesterday Good Boys Value Good Work", representingthe colours black (0), brown (1), red(2), orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, gray and white (9).

[3]

Mnemonics for numerical sequences

Mnemonic phrases or poems can be used to encode numeric sequences by various methods, the most common usingthe number of letters in each word. For example, the first 15 digits of the mathematical constant pi(3.14159265358979) can be encoded as "How I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involvingquantum mechanics". A large number of so-called

piems

have been devised, some containing thousands of digits;see the article on "Piphilology" for examples in multiple languages.

Mnemonic311

Arbitrariness of mnemonics

A curious characteristic of many memory systems is that mnemonics work despite being (or possibly because of being) illogical or arbitrary. "Roy" is a legitimate first name, but there is no actual surname "Biv" and of course themiddle initial "G" is arbitrary. Why is "Roy G. Biv" easy to remember in order to memorise the order that the sevencolours of the rainbow appear? ROYGBIV can also be expressed as the almost meaningless phrase "Roy GreatBritain the Fourth" again referencing "Roy" but using the GB national code for Great Britain and the Romannumerals for 4, viz: IV. The sentence "Richard of York gave battle in vain" is commonly used in the UK, as is "Runover your granny because it's violent". Any two of the three months ending in -ember would fit just as euphoniouslyas September and November in "Thirty days hath...", yet most people can remember the rhyme correctly for alifetime after having heard it once, and are never troubled by doubts as to

which

two of the -ember months havethirty days. A bizarre arbitrary association may stick in the mind better than a logical one.One reason for the effectiveness of seemingly arbitrary mnemonics is the grouping of information provided by themnemonic. Just as US phone numbers group 10 digits into three groups, the name "Roy G. Biv" groups seven colorsinto two short names and an initial. Various studies (most notably The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two)have shown that the human brain is capable of remembering only a limited number of arbitrary items in workingmemory; grouping these items into chunks permits the brain to hold more of them in memory.

Assembly mnemonics

In assembly language a mnemonic is a code, usually from 1 to 5 letters, that represents an opcode, a number.Programming in machine code, by supplying the computer with the numbers of the operations it must perform, canbe quite a burden, because for every operation the corresponding number must be looked up or remembered.Looking up all numbers takes a lot of time, and mis-remembering a number may introduce computer bugs.Therefore a set of mnemonics was devised. Each number was represented by an alphabetic code. So instead of entering the number corresponding to addition to add two numbers one can enter "add".Although mnemonics differ between different CPU designs some are common, for instance: "sub" (subtract), "div"(divide), "add" (add) and "mul" (multiply).This type of mnemonic is different from the ones listed above in that instead of a way to make rememberingnumbers easier, it is a way to make remembering numbers unnecessary (e.g. by relying on the computer's assemblerprogram to do the lookup work.)

In foreign-language acquisition

Mnemonics can be helpful in learning a foreign language, for example by adapting a hard-to-remember foreign wordto a pre-existent phrase in the learner's native language - using folk etymology. Linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann hasproposed many Anglo-Hebraic lexical mnemonics for English-speaking students of Israeli Hebrew. For example, intrying to assist the learner to remember

ohel

, the Hebrew word for

tent

, Zuckermann proposes the memorablesentence "

Oh hell

, there's a raccoon in my

tent

". The memorable sentence "There's a

fork

in

Ma

’

s leg

" may help thelearner remember that the Hebrew word for

fork

is

mazleg

, and so forth.

[4]

The notable linguist Michel Thomastaught students to remember that

estar

is the Spanish word for

to be

by using the phrase "to be a star". These aresometimes known as linkwords.Mnemonics are also useful for learning elements of a foreign language that do not exist in the native language of thelearner. For example, in Spanish language acquisition, a student may learn the gender of nouns by associatingmasculine nouns with the color blue and feminine nouns with red. This allows them to create visual images such as afoot stepping on a pie and blue filling squirting out the sides. The Spanish word for "foot" is

el pie

, a masculinenoun, so recollection of the blue filling will cue recall of the gender of the word.

Mnemonic312

Improving Long Term Memory Through Mnemonics

Mnemonics as we know is a technique or strategy that is used to attempt to improve memory. It attempts to makeinformation that is already stored in long-term memory more elaborate and easier to recall. It organizes newinformation so that we can retrieve it with other information that is similar to it. Thus meaning, organizing theinformation we aretrying to store with similar things we already have in our memory to make it easier to recall whenwe need to. One method to remember things in long-term is the method of loci is a mnemonic system where itemsthat we want to be remembered are associated with certain landmarks or locations. For example, if I list the things Ido in my day andthen associateda list of words that I am trying to remember with each event, it can help me toremember the word. Lets say the first two words are 'tree' and 'seven' and my day begins with me waking up and thenI brush my teeth. To remember the words, I would say 'I wake up with a tree' and second, 'I brush my seven teeth'.Notice how the words I want to recall are included with the things I do on a daily basis. This is how the method of Loci works. The second method is called the peg-word method is a mnemonic system where we try to rememberitems that are associated with a set of mental pegs that you already have in your memory. For example, lets use thenumbers 1 to 10. The two words we want to remember are bun and shoe, so we associate the number with the words.It would sound like this, "one-bun, two-shoe' and we would recite that to remember it. Another method to rememberthings is by narrative stories and songs. You link certain words that you want to remember to a story. Once you makea story with the words, it is easier to recall what the words are. Mnemonics slows the rate at which you hearinformation and allows you to encode it better.

[5]

Mnemonic transfer

There is research which suggests that previous use of mnemonics (such as the "peg-word" strategy) increases thelikelihood of subsequent uses of similar mnemonic devices, and that the success of such transferability is greater inundergraduates (and presumably, older youths in general) in comparison to younger students.

[6]

Four studies of undergraduate art education students predictably indicated that both mnemonic-general tactics (mnemonic devicesthat focused on overall styles and themes) and mnemonic-detail tactics, (mnemonic devices which focused on aparticular detail specific to the painting) designed to aid in the instruction and memory of painter-paintingconnections, were much more effective than the control group members' own-best-method tactics (where studentswere directed to use "whatever works best" for themselves).

[7]

More importantly, results communicated that whenstudents were instructed with mnemonic-general rather than mnemonic-detail strategies, they were often still able toidentify which painter created a given work of art, even if the student had never seen/learned about the paintingbefore, implying the students were able to infer the painter-painting relationship accurately, based on the transferredinformation from the previously learned mnemonic.

[8]

References

[1]Catherine Soanes; Angus Stevenson; Sara Hawker, ed (29 March 2006).

Concise Oxford English Dictionary (Computer Software)

(11th ed.).Oxford University Press. pp. Entry

mnemonic

.[2]Liddell, H. G.; R. Scott (1889).

Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon

. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-910206-6.[3]Gambhir, R.S. (1993).

Foundations Of Physics

(http://books.google.com/books?id=r-Qpy0KQayIC&pg=PA49&dq=resistor+code+mnemonic&hl=en&ei=0yNyTpCgLI-3hAe35OnICQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=resistor code mnemonic&f=false).

2

. New Age International. p. 49. ISBN 8122405231. .[4]Anglo-Hebraic lexical mnemonics for English-speaking students of Israeli Hebrew (http://www.

zuckermann.

org/mnemonics.

html), byGhil'ad Zuckermann.[5]Carlson, N. R., & Heth, C. D. (2010). Psychology, the science of behaviour. (4th ed.). Toronto: Pearson Canada. Retrieved 2011-11-25.[6]Carney, Russel N.; Levin, Joel R. (December 2000). "Mnemonic instruct, with a focus on transfer".

Journal of Educational Psychology

92

(4): 783-790. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.92.4.783.[7]Carney, Russel N.; Levin, Joel R. (December 2000). "Mnemonic instruct, with a focus on transfer".

Journal of Educational Psychology

92

(4): 783-790. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.92.4.783.[8]Carney, Russel N.; Levin, Joel R. (December 2000). "Mnemonic instruct, with a focus on transfer".

Journal of Educational Psychology

92

(4): 783-790. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.92.4.783.

Mnemonic313

External links

•Memory Improvement (http://www.dmoz.org/Reference/Knowledge_Management/Information_Assets/ Memory_Improvement/) at the Open Directory Project

Multiple realizability

Hilary Putnam, one of the founders of multiplerealizability

Multiple realizability

, in philosophy of mind, is the thesis that thesame mental property, state, or event can be implemented by differentphysical properties, states or events. The idea is widely believed tohave its roots in the late 1960s and early 1970s when a number of philosophers, most prominently Hilary Putnam and Jerry Fodor, put itforth as an argument against reductionist accounts of the relationbetween mental and physical kinds.

[1]

In short, a theory of mind thatincludes multiple realizability allows for the existence of strong AI.The original targets of these arguments were the type-identity theoryand eliminative materialism. The same arguments from multiplerealizability were also used to defend many versions of functionalism,especially

Machine state functionalism

.In recent years, however, multiple realizability has been used as aweapon to attack the very theory that it was originally designed todefend. Functionalism has consequently fallen out of vogue as adominant theory in the philosophy of mind. The dominant theory("received view" in the words of Lepore and Pylyshyn) in modernphilosophy of mind is a sort of generic non-reductive physicalism andone of its central pillars is the hypothesis of multiple realizability.In addition, Restrepo recently noted that the multiple realizability of the mental is a thesis Turing held at least tenyears before the authors to whom it is usually attributed to did.

[2]

In 1950 Turing expressed the multiple realizabilityof the mental in this way:The storage was to be purely mechanical, using wheels and cards.The fact that Babbage's Analytical Engine was to be entirely mechanical will help us rid ourselves of asuperstition. Importance is often attached to the fact that modern digital computers are electrical, and thenervous system is also electrical. Since Babbage's machine was not electrical, and since all digital computersare in a sense equivalent, we see that this use of electricity cannot be of theoretical importance... If we wish tofind such similarities we should look rather for mathematical analogies of function.

[3]

Multiple realizability314

Putnam's formulation

An illustration of multiple realizability.

M

standsfor mental and

P

stands for physical. It can beseen that more than one

P

can instantiate one

M

,but not vice versa. Causal relations between statesare represented by the arrows (

M1

goes to

M2

,etc.)

A classic example of the thesis of multiple realizability is to be foundin several papers published by Hilary Putnam in the late 1960s. Inthese papers, he argued that, contrary to the famous claim of type-identity theory, it was not true that "pain is identical to C-fibrefiring." It is possible that pain corresponds to, or is at least correlatedwith, completely different physical states of the nervous system indifferent organisms and yet they all experience the same mental stateof "being in pain." Putnam cited numerous examples from all over theanimal kingdom to illustrate his thesis. Is it likely that the brainstructures of all mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and molluscsrealize pain, or other mental states, in exactly the same way? Do theyeven have the same brain structures? Clearly not, if we are to believethe evidence furnished by comparative neuroanatomy andneurophysiology. How is it possible then that they can share the samemental states and properties? The answer had to be that these mental kinds were realized by different physical statesin different species. Putnam then took his argument a step further, asking about such things as the nervous systems of alien beings, artificially-intelligent robots and silicon-based life forms. Should such hypothetical entities beconsidered

a priori

incapable of experiencing pain just because they did not possess the same neurochemistry ashumans? Putnam concluded that type-identity and other reductive theorists had been making an extremely"ambitious" and "highly implausible" conjecture which could be disproved with just one example of multiplerealizability. This is sometimes referred to as

the likelihood argument

.Putnam also formulated a complementary argument based on, what he called,

functional isomorphism

. He definedthe concept in these terms: "Two systems are functionally isomorphic if

there is a correspondence between the statesof one and the states of the other that preserves functional relations

." So, in the case of computers, two machines arefunctionally isomorphic if and only if the sequential relations among states in the first are exactly mirrored by thesequential relations among states in the other. Therefore, a computer made out of silicon chips and a computer madeout of cogs and wheels can be functionally isomorphic but constitutionally diverse. Functional isomorphism impliesmultiple realizability. This is sometimes referred to as an "a priori argument".Jerry Fodor, Putnam and others immediately noted that, along with being a very effective argument againsttype-identity theories, multiple realizability implied that

any

low-level explanation of higher-level mentalphenomena would be insufficiently abstract and general. Functionalism, which attempts to identify mental kindswith functional kinds that are characterized exclusively in terms of causes and effects, abstracts from thephysico-chemical level of microphysics and hence seemed to be a more suitable alternative explanation of therelation between mind and body. In fact, there are many functional kinds such as mousetraps, software andbookshelves which are multiply realized at the physical level.

Fodor's generalization

Jaegwon Kim took up the challenge of responding to the problems posed by multiple realizability for reductionisttheories by suggesting that the physical realization base of a particular mental state was not a particular physical statebut the disjunction of the physical states which realize it. Jerry Fodor replied to this objection by formulating ageneralization of the multiple realizability thesis. According to Fodor, multiple realizability was not just somethingthat occurred "across physical structure-types" but was a phenomenon that could occur even within the same tokensystem (such as an organism). At different times, the same organism may realize type-identical mental kinds inphysically different forms. (This thesis was later given some empirical support with the discovery of the relative

Multiple realizability315plasticity of the human brain).Fodor used this generalized multiple realizability thesis to argue against reductionism of the mind and of the specialsciences. The key to Fodor's argument is that, in his characterization of reductionism, all mental kind predicates in anideal and completed psychology must correspond with a physical kind predicate in an ideal and completed physics.He suggested taking Ernest Nagel's theory of reduction, which insisted on the derivability of all terms in the theoryto be reduced from terms in the reducing theory and the bridging laws, as the canonical theory of reduction. Givengeneralized multiple realizability, the physical science part of these psychophysical bridge laws will end up being a,possibly infinite, disjunction of all the terms referring to possible physical realizations of a mental kind. Thisdisjunction cannot be a kind-predicate and therefore the entire statement cannot be a law of physics. The specialsciences cannot be reduced to physics in this way, according to Fodor.Later on, in 1988, Hilary Putnam applied the argument from Fodor's generalized version of multiple realizability toargue against functionalism itself, including, and above all, his own version of functionalism, machine statefunctionalism. Noting that functionalism is essentially a watered-down reductionist or identity theory in whichmental kinds are ultimately identified with functional kinds, Putnam argued that mental kinds were probablymultiply realizable over functional kinds. The same mental state or property could be implemented or realized bydifferent states of a universal Turing machine.

Objections and responses

Against the early version

Early objections to multiple realizability were limited to the narrow, "across structures-type" version. Starting withDavid Kellogg Lewis, many reductionists argued that it is very common, perhaps the rule, in actual scientificpractice to reduce one theory to another by way of "local" and structure-specific reductions. A frequently citedexample of this sort of intertheoretic reduction is the case of temperature from classical thermodynamics.Temperature is identical to mean molecular kinetic energy. But this is only true of

temperature in a gas

.Temperature in a solid is identical to mean

maximal

molecular kinetic energy, because the molecules of a solid aremore restricted in their movements. Temperature in a plasma is something of a mystery, since the molecules of aplasma are torn apart. Therefore, temperature, in classical thermodynamics is multiply realized in a wide diversity of microphysical states.One common defence of multiple realizability in the literature, however, is that any suchresponse which attempts to address the problem of the possibility of

generalized

multiple realizability must necessarily be so "local" and"context" specific in nature, referring exclusively to a certain token system of a certain structure-type at a certaintime, that its reductions would be incompatible with even a minimally acceptable degree of generality in scientifictheorizing. This problem is well illustrated by the controversial question of the plasticity of the human brain. Neuralplasticity consists simply in the fact that different areas of the brain can, and often do, take over the functions of other parts which have been damaged as the result of traumatic injury, pathology, natural biological developmentand other processes. Any psychology which is narrowed down sufficiently to handle this level of multiplerealizability will almost certainly not be general enough to capture the generalizations needed to explain only humanpsychology.

Against the general version

However, reductionists (perhaps the most recent examples being Bechtel and Mundale) reply that this is simply notempirically plausible. In order to conduct research and carry out experiments in the neurosciences some universalconsistencies must either exist or be assumed to exist in brain structures. It is the similarity (or homology) of brainstructures which allows us to generalize across species. If multiple realizability (especially the generalized form)were an empirical fact, then results from experiments conducted on one species of animal (or one organism) would

Multiple realizability316not be meaningful or useful when generalized to explain the behavior or other characteristics of another species (ororganism of the same species).Sungsu Kim has recently responded to this objection by pointing to the important distinction between homology of brain structures and homoplasy. Homologies are any characteristics of physiology, morphology, behavior orpsychology that are shared by two or more species and that are inherited from a common ancestor. Homoplasies arecharacteristics that are shared by two or more species but that are not inherited from a common ancestor. Humanarms and bird wings are homologous, while bird wings and bat wings (even though they strongly resemble eachother) are not. The fact that brain structures are homologous is no evidence either for or against multiplerealizability. The only way to really empirically test the thesis of multiple realizability would be to examinehomoplasious brain structures and determine whether some "psychological processes or functions might be'constructed' from different material" and supported by different brain structures just as the wings of bats and thoseof birds are constructed from different materials. The emergence of the same identical brain structures byevolutionary convergence would, perhaps, provide some (weak) evidence against multiple realizability, since it ishighly improbable that this could actually happen.It would be

weak evidence

because it would still not eliminate the possibility of the existence of mental statesidentical to ours in non-carbon based life forms on other planets or in machines.

Kim's argument

Jaegwon Kim has recently argued against non-reductive physicalism on the grounds that it violates the causal closureof the physical. Roughly, the idea is that physics provides a full explanation of physical events. If mental propertiesare causally efficacious, they must either be identical to physical properties, or there must be widespreadoverdetermination. The latter is often held to be either unlikely or even impossible on conceptual grounds. If this isright, then the options seem to be either reduction or elimination.

References

[1]Bickle, J. (2006). Multiple realizability. In Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Available at http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/ multiple-realizability/.

Last revised in 2006, and last checked on May 27, 2009.[2]Restrepo, R. (2009). Russell's Structuralism and the Supposed Death of Computational Cognitive Science. Minds and Machines 19(2):181-197.[3]Turing, A. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind 59. In J. Copeland (Ed.), The essential Turing (pp. 433

–

460). Oxford:Claredon Press, p. 446.

•Putnam, Hilary.

Representation and Reality

.1988. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press.•Fodor, Jerry.

The Language of Thought

. 1975. New York. Thomas Cromwell.•Bechtel, William and Mundale, Jennifer.

Multiple Realizability Revisited

in

Philosophy of Science

66: 175-207.•Kim, Sungsu.

Testing Multiple Realizability: A Discussion of Bechtel and Mundale

in

Philosophy of Science

. 69:606-610.•Kim, Jaegwon.

Multiple Realizability and the Metaphysics of Reduction

on

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

. 52: 1-26.•Shapiro, Lawrence A.

Multiple Realizations

.

Multiple realizability317

External links

•'Multiple Realizability' entry at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by John Bickle (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/ entries/multiple-realizability/)•David Chalmer's bibliography on reduction and multiple realizability (http://consc.net/biblio.

html)

Neural correlates of consciousness

The Neuronal Correlates of Consciousness (NCC) constitute the smallest set of neural events and structures sufficient for a given conscious percept or explicitmemory. This case involves synchronized action potentials in neocorticalpyramidal neurons.[1]

The

neural correlates of consciousness

(

NCC

) constitute the minimal set of neuronal events and mechanisms sufficientfor a specific conscious percept.

[1]

Neuroscientists use empirical approaches todiscover neural correlates of subjectivephenomena.

[2]

The set should be

minimal

because, while the entire brain is clearlysufficient to give rise to any given consciousexperience, the question is which of itscomponents were necessary to produce it.

Neurobiological approach to consciousness

A science of consciousness must explain the exact relationship between subjective mental states and brain states, thenature of the relationship between the conscious mind and the electro-chemical interactions in the body. Progress inneurophilosophy has come from focusing on the body rather than the mind. In this context the neuronal correlates of consciousness may be viewed as its causes and consciousness thought of as a state-dependent property of anundefined type of complex, adaptive, and highly interconnected biological system.

[3]

Discovering and characterizing neural correlates does not offer a theory of consciousness that can explain whyparticular systems experience anything at all, why they are associated with consciousness and why other systems of equal complexity are not, but understanding the NCC is a step toward such a theory. Most neurobiologists assumethat the variables giving rise to consciousness are to be found at the neuronal level, governed by classical physics,though a few scholars have proposed that quantum behaviors underlie consciousness.

[4]

However there is noevidence that any components of the nervous system display quantum entanglement.

[5]

There is great apparent redundancy and parallelism in neural networks so, while activity in one group of neuronsmay correlate with a percept in one case, a different population might mediate a related percept if the formerpopulation is lost or inactivated. Yet every phenomenal, subjective state will have neural correlates. If the NCC canbe induced artificially the subject will experience the associated percept, while perturbing or inactivating the regionof correlation for a specific percept will affect the percept or cause it to disappear, giving a cause-effect relationshipfrom the neural region to the nature of the percept. However the nature of conscious experience itself is not affected.What characterizes the NCC? What are the communalities between the NCC for seeing and for hearing? Will theNCC involve all pyramidal neurons in cortex at any given point in time? Or only a subset of long-range projectioncells in frontal lobes that project to the sensory cortices in the back? Neurons that fire in a rhythmic manner?Neurons that fire in a synchronous manner? These are some of the proposals that have been advanced over theyears.

[6]

The growing ability of neuroscientists to manipulate neurons using methods from molecular biology in combinationwith optical tools (e.g., Adamantidis et al. 2007) depends on the simultaneous development of appropriate behavioral

Neural correlates of consciousness318assays and model organisms amenable to large-scale genomic analysis and manipulation. It is the combination of such fine-grained neuronal analysis in animals with ever more sensitive psychophysical and brain imagingtechniques in humans, complemented by the development of a robust theoretical predictive framework, that willhopefully lead to a rational understanding of consciousness, one of the central mysteries of life.

Level of arousal and content of consciousness

There are twocommon but distinct dimensions of the term

consciousness

,

[7]

one involving

arousal

and

states o f consciousness

and the other involving

content of consciousness

and

conscious states

. To be conscious

of

anythingthe brain must be in a relatively high state of arousal (sometimes called

vigilance

), whether in wakefulness or REMsleep, vividly experienced in dreams although usually not remembered. Brain arousal level fluctuates in a circadianrhythm but may be influenced by lack of sleep, drugs and alcohol, physical exertion, etc. Arousal can be measuredbehaviorally by the signal amplitude that triggers some criterion reaction (for instance, the sound level necessary toevoke an eye movement or a head turn toward the sound source). Clinicians use scoring systems such as theGlasgow Coma Scale to assess the level of arousal in patients.High arousal states are associated with conscious states that have specific content, seeing, hearing, remembering,planning or fantasizing about something. Different levels or states of consciousness are associated with differentkinds of conscious experiences. The "awake" state is quite different from the "dreaming" state (for instance, the latterhas little or no self-reflection) and from the state of deep sleep. In all three cases the basic physiology of the brain isaffected, as it also is in

altered states of consciousness

, for instance after taking drugs or during meditation whenconscious perception and insight may be enhanced compared to the normal waking state.Clinicians talk about

impaired states of consciousness

as in "the comatose state", "the persistent vegetative state"(PVS), and "the minimally conscious state" (MCS). Here, "state" refers to different "amounts" of external/physicalconsciousness, from a total absence in coma, persistent vegetative state and general anesthesia, to a fluctuating andlimited form of conscious sensation in a minimally conscious state such as sleep walking or during a complex partialepileptic seizure.

[8]

The repertoire of conscious states or experiences accessible to a patient in a minimally consciousstate is comparatively limited. In brain death there is no arousal but to assume that the core continuous subjectivityof experience has been interrupted, rather than its link with the organism, is to beg the question.The potential

richness of conscious experience

appears to increase from deep sleep to drowsiness to fullwakefulness, as might be quantified using notions from complexity theory that incorporate both the dimensionalityas well as the granularity of conscious experience to give an integrated-information-theoretical account of consciousness.

[9]

As behavioral arousal increases so does the range and complexity of possible behavior. Yet inREM sleep there is a characteristic atonia, low motor arousal and the person is difficult to wake up, but there is stillhigh metabolic and electric brain activity and vivid perception.Many nuclei with distinct chemical signatures in the thalamus, midbrain and pons must function for a subject to be ina sufficient state of brain arousal to experience anything at all. These nuclei therefore belong to the enabling factorsfor consciousness. Conversely it is likely that the specific content of any particular conscious sensation is mediatedby particular neurons in cortex and their associated satellite structures, including the amygdala, thalamus, claustrumand the basal ganglia.

The neuronal basis of perception

The possibility of precisely manipulating visual percepts in time and space has made vision a preferred modality inthe quest for the NCC. Psychologists have perfected a number of techniques

–

masking, binocular rivalry,continuous flash suppression, motion induced blindness, change blindness, inattentional blindness

–

in which theseemingly simple and unambiguous relationship between a physical stimulus in the world and its associated perceptin the privacy of the subject's mind is disrupted.

[10]

In particular a stimulus can be perceptually suppressed for

Neural correlates of consciousness319seconds or even minutes at a time: the image is projected into one of the observer's eyes but is invisible, not seen. Inthis manner the neural mechanisms that respond to the subjective percept rather than the physical stimulus can beisolated, permitting visual consciousness to be tracked in the brain. In a

perceptual illusion

, the physical stimulusremains fixed while the percept fluctuates. The best known example is the

Necker cube

whose 12 lines can beperceived in one of two different ways in depth.

The Necker Cube: The left line drawing can be perceived in one of two distinctdepth configurations shown on the right. Without any other cue, the visual systemflips back and forth between these two interpretations.[11]

A perceptual illusion that can be preciselycontrolled is

binocular rivalry

. Here, a smallimage, e.g., a horizontal grating, ispresented to the left eye, and another image,e.g., a vertical grating, is shown to thecorresponding location in the right eye. Inspite of the constant visual stimulus,observers consciously see the horizontalgrating alternate every few seconds with thevertical one. The brain does not allow forthe simultaneous perception of both images.Logothetis and colleagues

[12]

recorded avariety of visual cortical areas in awakemacaque monkeys performing a binocularrivalry task. Macaque monkeys can betrained to report whether they see the left orthe right image. The distribution of theswitching times and the way in whichchanging the contrast in one eye affectsthese leaves little doubt that monkeys and humans experience the same basic phenomenon. In the primary visualcortex (V1) only a small fraction of cells weakly modulated their response as a function of the percept of the monkeywhile most cells responded to one or the other retinal stimulus with little regard to what the animal perceived at thetime. But in a high-level cortical area such as the inferior temporal cortex along the ventral stream almost all neuronsresponded only to the perceptually dominant stimulus, so that a "face" cell only fired when the animal indicated thatit saw the face and not the pattern presented to the other eye. This implies that NCC involve neurons active in theinferior temporal cortex: it is likely that specific reciprocal actions of neurons in the inferior temporal and parts of the prefrontal cortex are necessary.A number of fMRI experiments that have exploited binocular rivalry and related illusions to identify thehemodynamic activity underlying visual consciousness in humans demonstrate quite conclusively that BOLDactivity in the upper stages of the ventral pathway (e.g., the fusiform face area and the parahippocampal place area)as well as in early regions, including V1 and the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), follow the percept and not theretinal stimulus.

[13]

Further, a number of fMRI experiments

[14]

[15]

suggest V1 is necessary but not sufficient forvisual consciousness.

[16]

In a related perceptual phenomenon,

flash suppression

, the percept associated with an image projected into one eyeis suppressed by flashing another image into the other eye while the original image remains. Its methodologicaladvantage over binocular rivalry is that the timing of the perceptual transition is determined by an external triggerrather than by an internal event. The majority of cells in the inferior temporal cortex and the superior temporal sulcusof monkeys trained to report their percept during flash suppression follow the animal's percept: when the cell'spreferred stimulus is perceived, the cell responds. If the picture is still present on the retina but is perceptuallysuppressed, the cell falls silent, even though primary visual cortex neurons fire.

[17]

[18]

Single-neuron recordings inthe medial temporal lobe of epilepsy patients during flash suppression likewise demonstrate abolishment of response

Neural correlates of consciousness320when the preferred stimulus is present but perceptually masked.

[19]

Global disorders of consciousness

Given the absence of any accepted criterion of the minimal neuronal correlates necessary for consciousness thedistinction between a persistently vegetative patient, who shows regular sleep-wave transitions and may be able tomove or smile, and a minimally conscious patient who can communicate (on occasion) in a meaningful manner (forinstance, by differential eye movements) and who shows some signs of consciousness, is often difficult. In globalanesthesia the patient should not experience psychological trauma but the level of arousal should be compatible withclinical exigencies.

Midline structures in the brainstem and thalamus necessary to regulate the level of brain arousal. Small, bilateral lesions in many of these nuclei cause a global loss of consciousness.[20]

Blood-oxygen-level-dependent fMRI(BOLD fMRI) have demonstrated normalpatterns of brain activity in a patient in avegetative state following a severe traumaticbrain injury when asked to imagine playingtennis or visiting rooms in his/her house.

[21]

Differential brain imaging of patients withsuch global disturbances of consciousness(including akinetic mutism) reveal thatdysfunction in a widespread corticalnetwork including medial and lateralprefrontal and parietal associative areas isassociated with a global loss of awareness.

[22]

Impaired consciousness inepileptic seizures of the temporal lobe waslikewise accompanied by a decrease incerebral blood flow in frontal and parietalassociation cortex and an increase in midlinestructures such as the mediodorsalthalamus.

[23]

Relatively local bilateral injuries to midline (paramedian) subcortical structures can also cause a complete loss of awareness. These structures therefore

enable

and control brain arousal (as determined by metabolic or electricalactivity) and are necessary neural correlates. One such example is the heterogeneous collection of more than twodozen nuclei on each side of the upper brainstem (pons, midbrain and in the posterior hypothalamus), collectivelyreferred to as the reticular activating system (RAS). Their axons project widely throughout the brain. These nuclei

–

three-dimensional collections of neurons with their own cyto-architecture and neurochemical identity

–

releasedistinct neuromodulators such as acetylcholine, noradrenaline/norepinephrine, serotonin, histamine andorexin/hypocretin to control the excitability of the thalamus and forebrain, mediating alternation betweenwakefulness and sleep as well as general level of behavioral and brain arousal. After such trauma, however,eventually the excitability of the thalamus and forebrain can recover and consciousness can return.

[24]

Anotherenabling factor for consciousness are the five or more intralaminar nuclei (ILN) of the thalamus. These receive inputfrom many brainstem nuclei and project strongly, directly to the basal ganglia and, in a more distributed manner, intolayer I of much of the neocortex. Comparatively small (1 cm

3

or less) bilateral lesions in the thalamic ILNcompletely knock out all awareness.

[25]

Neural correlates of consciousness321

Forward versus feedback projections

Many actions in response to sensory inputs are rapid, transient, stereotyped, and unconscious.

[26]

They could bethought of as cortical reflexes and are characterized by rapid and somewhat stereotyped responses that can take theform of rather complex automated behavior as seen, e.g., in complex partial epileptic seizures. These automatedresponses, sometimes called

zombie behaviors

,

[27]

could be contrasted by a slower, all-purpose conscious mode thatdeals more slowly with broader, less stereotyped aspects of the sensory inputs (or a reflection of these, as in imagery)and takes time to decide on appropriate thoughts and responses. Without such a consciousness mode, a vast numberof different zombie modes would be required to react to unusual events.A feature that distinguishes humans from most animals is that we are not born with an extensive repertoire of behavioral programs that would enable us to survive on our own ("physiological prematurity"). To compensate forthis, we have an unmatched ability to learn, i.e., to consciously acquire such programs by imitation or exploration.Once consciously acquired and sufficiently exercised, these programs can become automated to the extent that theirexecution happens beyond the realms of our awareness. Take, as an example, the incredible fine motor skills exertedin playing a Beethoven piano sonata or the sensorimotor coordination required to ride a motorcycle along a curvymountain road. Such complex behaviors are possible only because a sufficient number of the subprograms involvedcan be executed with minimal or even suspended conscious control. In fact, the conscious system may actuallyinterfere somewhat with these automated programs.

[28]

From an evolutionary standpoint it clearly makes sense to have both automated behavioral programs that can beexecuted rapidly in a stereotyped and automated manner, and a slightly slower system that allows time for thinkingand planning more complex behavior. This latter aspect may be one of the principal functions of consciousness.It seems possible that visual zombie modes in the cortex mainly use the dorsal ("where?") stream in the parietalregion.

[26]

However, parietal activity can affect consciousness by producing attentional effects on the ventral stream,at least under some circumstances. The conscious mode for vision depends largely on the early visual areas (beyondV1) and especially on the ventral stream.Seemingly complex visual processing (such as detecting animals in natural, cluttered scenes) can be accomplishedby the human cortex within 130

–

150 ms,

[29]

[30]

far too brief for eye movements and conscious perception to occur.Furthermore, reflexes such as the oculovestibular reflex take place at even more rapid time-scales. It is quiteplausible that such behaviors are mediated by a purely feed-forward moving wave of spiking activity that passesfrom the retina through V1, into V4, IT and prefrontal cortex, until it affects motorneurons in the spinal cord thatcontrol the finger press (as in a typical laboratory experiment). The hypothesis that the basic processing of information is feedforward is supported most directly by the short times (approx. 100 ms) required for a selectiveresponse to appear in IT cells.Conversely, conscious perception is believed to require more sustained, reverberatory neural activity, most likely viaglobal feedback from frontal regions of neocortex back to sensory cortical areas

[16]

that builds up over time until itexceeds a critical threshold. At this point, the sustained neural activity rapidly propagates to parietal, prefrontal andanterior cingulate cortical regions, thalamus, claustrum and related structures that support short-term memory,multi-modality integration, planning, speech, and other processes intimately related to consciousness. Competitionprevents more than one or a very small number of percepts to be simultaneously and actively represented. This is thecore hypothesis of the global workspace theory of consciousness.

[31]

[32]

In brief, while rapid but transient neural activity in the thalamo-cortical system can mediate complex behaviorwithout conscious sensation, it is surmised that consciousness requires sustained but well-organized neural activitydependent on long-range cortico-cortical feedback.

Neural correlates of consciousness322

Notes

[1]Koch 2004, p. 16.[2]See here (http://www.

klab.

caltech.edu/~koch/glossary.html) for a glossary of related terms.[3]Squire 2008, p. 1223.[4]Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Henry P. Stapp, Mario Beauregard. "Quantum physics in neuroscience and psychology: A neurophysiological model of mind/brain interaction" (http://www-physics.lbl.

gov/~stapp/PTB6.pdf). .[5]Koch and Hepp 2006[6]See Chalmers 1998, available online.[7]Zeman 2001[8]Schiff 2004[9]Tononi 2004[10]Kim and Blake 2004[11]Koch 2004, p. 270.[12]Logothetis 1998[13]Rees and Frith 2007[14]Haynes and Rees 2005[15]Lee et al. 2007[16]Crick and Koch 1995[17]Leopold and Logothetis 1996[18]Sheinberg and Logothetis 1997[19]Kreiman et al. 2002[20]Koch 2004, p. 91.[21]Owen et al. 2006[22]Laureys 2005[23]Blumenfeld et al. 2004[24]Villablanca 2004[25]Bogen 1995[26]Milner and Goodale 1995[27]Koch and Crick 2001[28]Beilock et al. 2002[29]Thorpe et al. 1996[30]VanRullen and Koch 2003[31]Baars 1988[32]Dehaene et al. 2003

References

•Adamantidis A.R., Zhang F., Aravanis A.M., Deisseroth K. and de Lecea L. (2007) Neural substrates of awakening probed with optogenetic control of hypocretin neurons. Nature. advanced online publication.•Baars B.J. (1988) A cognitive theory of consciousness. Cambridge University Press: New York, NY.•Beilock S.L., Carr T.H., MacMahon C. and Starkes J.L. (2002) When paying attention becomescounterproductive: impact of divided versus skill-focused attention on novice and experienced performance of sensorimotor skills. J. Exp. Psychol. Appl. 8: 6

–

16.•Blumenfeld H., McNally K.A., Vanderhill S.D., Paige A.L., Chung R., Davis K., Norden A.D., Stokking R.,Studholme C., Novotny E.J. Jr., Zubal I.G. and Spencer S.S. (2004) Positive and negative network correlations intemporal lobe epilepsy. Cereb. Cort. 14: 892

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902.•Bogen J.E. (1995) On the neurophysiology of consciousness: I. An Overview. Consciousness & Cognition 4:52

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net/papers/ncc2.html), in Metzinger, Thomas,

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275.•Crick F.C. and Koch C. (1995) Are we aware of neural activity in primary visual cortex? Nature 375: 121

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The quest for consciousness: a neurobiological approach

. Englewood, US-CO: Roberts &Company Publishers. p. 429. ISBN 0-9747077-0-8.•Koch C. and Crick F.C. (2001) On the zombie within. Nature 411: 893.•Koch C. and Hepp K. (2006) Quantum mechanics and higher brain functions: Lessons from quantum computationand neurobiology. Nature 440: 611

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Fundamental neuroscience

(3rd ed.). Academic Press. p. 1256. ISBN 0123740193.•Tononi G. (2004) An information integration theory of consciousness. BMC Neuroscience. 5: 42

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208.•Zeman A. (2001) Consciousness (http://brain.oxfordjournals.

org/content/124/7/1263.long). Brain. 7:1263-1289.

Neural correlates of consciousness324

Further reading

•Smoliar, Stephen W (1994), "Review of G.M. Edelman (book review)"

[3]

, in William J. Clancey, Stephen W.Smoliar, Mark Stefik (editors),

Contemplating minds: a forum for artificial intelligence

, Massachusetts:Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pp. 431

–

446, ISBN 0-262-53119-4, retrieved 21 May 2010 (originallypublished in

Artificial Intelligence

39

(1989) 121-139.)

External links

•How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now by William H. Calvin

[4]

•Neurogenesis in the Adult Human Brain

[5]

•Johnson, George "Evolution Between the Ears"

[6]

, "New York Times," April 19, 1992, accessed April 16, 2007(a critical review of Gerald Edelman's 1992 book

Brilliant Air, Brilliant Fire

)•Calvin, William "Neural Darwinism: The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection"

[7]

,

Science

, 24 June 1988,accessed April 16, 2007 (a review of Gerald Edelman's book

Neural Darwinism

)•Webpage of Chrisantha Fernando

[8]

, first author of "Copying and Evolution of Neuronal Topology"•A Wikiversity course that extensively discusses neural Darwinism•The basic Neuroscience course at Wikiversity•The Department of Neuroscience at Wikiversity

References

[1]http://www.

plosone.

org/article/info:doi%2F10.

1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003775[2]http://www.

mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.

1162/NECO_a_00031[3]http://books.

google.

com.

au/books?id=FVJ9xib-XxMC&pg=PA431&dq=artificial+intelligence+smoliar+%22Neural+darwinism%22#v=onepage&q=artificial%20intelligence%20smoliar%20%22Neural%20darwinism%22&f=false[4]http://faculty.

washington.

edu/wcalvin/bk8/ [5]http://www.

abacon.

com/pinel/hot_sept.

html[6]http://www.

santafe.

edu/~johnson/reviews.

edelman.

html[7]http://williamcalvin.

com/1980s/1988Science.htm[8]http://www.

cogs.

susx.

ac.

uk/users/ctf20/dphil_2005/index.

htm

Nonreductive physicalism327

Nonreductive physicalism

A phrenological mapping[1]of the brain. Phrenologywas among the first attempts to correlate mentalfunctions with specific parts of the brain.

Philosophy of mind

is a branch of philosophy that studies thenature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mentalproperties, consciousness and their relationship to the physicalbody, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e. therelationship of the mind to the body, is commonly seen as thecentral issue in philosophy of mind, although there are other issuesconcerning the nature of the mind that do not involve its relation tothe physical body.

[2]

Dualism and monism are the two major schools of thought thatattempt to resolve the mind-body problem. Dualism can be tracedback to Plato,

[3]

Aristotle

[4]

[5]

[6]

and the Sankhya and Yogaschools of Hindu philosophy,

[7]

but it was most preciselyformulated by René Descartes in the 17th century.

[8]

SubstanceDualists argue that the mind is an independently existingsubstance, whereas Property Dualists maintain that the mind is agroup of independent properties that emerge from and cannot bereduced to the brain, but that it is not a distinct substance.

[9]

Monism is the position that mind and body are not ontologicallydistinct kinds of entities. This view was first advocated in Western philosophy by Parmenides in the 5th century BCand was later espoused by the 17th century rationalist Baruch Spinoza.

[10]

Physicalists argue that only the entitiespostulated by physical theory exist, and that the mind will eventually be explained in terms of these entities asphysical theory continues to evolve. Idealists maintain that the mind is all that exists and that the external world iseither mental itself, or an illusion created by the mind. Neutral monists adhere to the position that there is someother, neutral substance, and that both matter and mind are properties of this unknown substance. The most commonmonisms in the 20th and 21st centuries have all been variations of physicalism; these positions include behaviorism,the type identity theory, anomalous monism and functionalism.

[11]

Most modern philosophers of mind adopt either a reductive or non-reductive physicalist position, maintaining intheir different ways that the mind is not something separate from the body.

[11]

These approaches have beenparticularly influential in the sciences, especially in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionarypsychology and the various neurosciences.

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

Other philosophers, however, adopt a non-physicalistposition which challenges the notion that the mind is a purely physical construct. Reductive physicalists assert thatall mental states and properties will eventually be explained by scientific accounts of physiological processes andstates.

[16]

[17]

[18]

Non-reductive physicalists argue that although the brain is all there is to the mind, the predicatesand vocabulary used in mental descriptions and explanations are indispensable, and cannot be reduced to thelanguage and lower-level explanations of physical science.

[19]

[20]

Continued neuroscientific progress has helped toclarify some of these issues. However, they are far from having been resolved, and modern philosophers of mindcontinue to ask how the subjective qualities and the intentionality (aboutness) of mental states and properties can beexplained in naturalistic terms.

[21]

[22]

Nonreductive physicalism328

The mind

–

body problem

The mind-body problem concerns the explanation of the relationship that exists between minds, or mental processes,and bodily states or processes.

[2]

The main aim of philosophers working in this area is to determine the nature of themind and mental states/processes, and how

—

or even if

—

minds are affected by and can affect the body.Our perceptual experiences depend on stimuli which arrive at our various sensory organs from the external worldand these stimuli cause changes in our mental states, ultimately causing us to feel a sensation, which may be pleasantor unpleasant. Someone's desire for a slice of pizza, for example, will tend to cause that person to move his or herbody in a specific manner and in a specific direction to obtain what he or she wants. The question, then, is how it canbe possible for conscious experiences to arise out of a lump of gray matter endowed with nothing butelectrochemical properties.

[11]

A related problem is how someone's propositional attitudes (e.g. beliefs and desires) cause that individual's neuronsto fire and his muscles to contract. These comprise some of the puzzles that have confronted epistemologists andphilosophers of mind from at least the time of René Descartes.

[8]

Dualist solutions to the mind

–

body problem

Dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind andmatter (or body). It begins with the claim that mental phenomena are,in some respects, non-physical.

[9]

One of the earliest knownformulations of mind-body dualism was expressed in the easternSankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy (c. 650 BCE), whichdivided the world into purusha (mind/spirit) and prakriti (materialsubstance).

[7]

Specifically, the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali presents ananalytical approach to the nature of the mind.In Western Philosophy, the earliest discussions of dualist ideas are inthe writings of Plato and Aristotle. Each of these maintained, but fordifferent reasons, that humans' "intelligence" (a faculty of the mind orsoul) could not be identified with, or explained in terms of, their physical body.

[3]

[4]

However, the best-knownversion of dualism is due to René Descartes (1641), and holds that the mind is a non-extended, non-physicalsubstance, a "res cogitans".

[8]

Descartes was the first to clearly identify the mind with consciousness andself-awareness, and to distinguish this from the brain, which was the seat of intelligence. He was therefore the first toformulate the mind-body problem in the form in which it still exists today.

[8]

Arguments for dualism

The most frequently used argument in favour of dualism is that it appeals to the common-sense intuition thatconscious experience is distinct from inanimate matter.If asked what the mind is, the average person would usuallyrespond by identifying it with their self, their personality, their soul, or some other such entity. They would almostcertainly deny that the mind simply is the brain, or vice-versa, finding the idea that there is just one ontological entityat play to be too mechanistic, or simply unintelligible.

[9]

Many modern philosophers of mind think that theseintuitions are misleading and that we should use our critical faculties, along with empirical evidence from thesciences, to examine these assumptions to determine whether there is any real basis to them.

[9]

Another important argument in favor of dualism is that the mental and the physical seem to have quite different, andperhaps irreconcilable, properties.

[23]

Mental events have a subjective quality, whereas physical events do not. So,for example, one can reasonably ask what a burnt finger feels like, or what a blue sky looks like, or what nice musicsounds like to a person. But it is meaningless, or at least odd, to ask what a surge in the uptake of glutamate in thedorsolateral portion of the hippocampus feels like.

Nonreductive physicalism329The Argument from Reason holds that if, as monism implies, all of our thoughts are the effects of physical causes,then we have no reason for assuming that they are also the consequent of a reasonable ground. Knowledge, however,is apprehended by reasoning from ground to consequent. Therefore, if monism is correct, there would be no way of knowing this

—

or anything else not the direct result of a physical cause

—

and we could not even suppose it, exceptby a fluke.Philosophers of mind call the subjective aspects of mental events 'qualia' or 'raw feels'.

[23]

There is something that itis like to feel pain, to see a familiar shade of blue, and so on. There are qualia involved in these mental events thatseem particularly difficult to reduce to anything physical.

[24]

If consciousness (the mind) can exist independently of physical reality (the brain), one must explain how physicalmemories are created concerning consciousness. Dualism must therefore explain how consciousness affects physicalreality. One possible explanation is that of a miracle, proposed by Arnold Geulincx and Nicolas Malebranche, whereall mind-body interactions require the direct intervention of God. A similar position by Albert Einstein considers themind's comprehension of sense impression to be a miracle.

[25]

Another possible explanation has been proposed by C.S. Lewis. Although at the time Lewis wrote

Miracles

,

[26]

Quantum Mechanics (and physical indeterminism) wasonly in the initial stages of acceptance, he stated the logical possibility that if the physical world was proved to beindeterministic this would provide an entry (interaction) point into the traditionally viewed closed system, where ascientifically described physically probable/improbable event could be philosophically described as an action of anon physical entity on physical reality.The zombie argument is based on a thought experiment proposed by Todd Moody, and developed by DavidChalmers in his book

The Conscious Mind

. The basic idea is that one can imagine one's body, and therefore conceivethe existence of one's body, without any conscious states being associated with this body. Chalmers' argument is thatit seems very plausible that such a being could exist because all that is needed is that all and only the things that thephysical sciences describe about a zombie must be true of it. Since none of the concepts involved in these sciencesmake reference to consciousness or other mental phenomena, and any physical entity can be by definition describedscientifically via physics, the move from conceivability to possibility is not such a large one.

[27]

Others such asDennett have argued that the notion of a philosophical zombie is an incoherent,

[28]

or unlikely,

[29]

concept. It hasbeen argued under physicalism, that one must either believe that anyone including oneself might be a zombie, or thatno one can be a zombie

—

following from the assertion that one's own conviction about being (or not being) a zombieis a product of the physical world and is therefore no different from anyone else's. This argument has been expressedby Dennett who argues that "Zombies think, they are conscious, think, they have qualia, think, they sufferpains

—

they are just 'wrong' (according to this lamentable tradition), in ways that neither they nor we could everdiscover!"

[28]

Nonreductive physicalism330

Interactionist dualism

Portrait of René Descartes by Frans Hals (1648)

Interactionist dualism, or simply interactionism, is the particular formof dualism first espoused by Descartes in the

Meditations

.

[8]

In the 20thcentury, its major defenders have been Karl Popper and John CarewEccles.

[30]

It is the view that mental states, such as beliefs and desires,causally interact with physical states.

[9]

Descartes' famous argument for this position can be summarized asfollows: Seth has a clear and distinct idea of his mind as a thinkingthing which has no spatial extension (i.e., it cannot be measured interms of length, weight, height, and so on). He also has a clear anddistinct idea of his body as something that is spatially extended, subjectto quantification and not able to think. It follows that mind and bodyare not identical because they have radically different properties.

[8]

At the same time, however, it is clear that Seth's mental states (desires,beliefs, etc.) have causal effects on his body and vice-versa: A childtouches a hot stove (physical event) which causes pain (mental event)and makes her yell (physical event), this in turn provokes a sense of fear and protectiveness in the caregiver (mentalevent), and so on.Descartes' argument crucially depends on the premise thatwhat Seth believes to be "clear and distinct" ideas in hismind are necessarily true. Many contemporary philosophers doubt this.

[31]

[32]

[33]

For example, Joseph Agassisuggests that several scientific discoveries made since the early 20th century have undermined the idea of privilegedaccess to one's own ideas. Freud has shown that a psychologically-trained observer can understand a person'sunconscious motivations better than the person himself does. Duhem has shown that a philosopher of science canknow a person's methods of discovery better than that person herself does, while Malinowski has shown that ananthropologist can know a person's customs and habits better than the person whose customs and habits they are. Healso asserts that modern psychological experiments that cause people to see things that are not there provide groundsfor rejecting Descartes' argument, because scientists can describe a person's perceptions better than the person herself can.

[34]

[35]

The weakness common to all these arguments against interactionism is that they put all introspectiveinsight in doubt. We know people make mistakes about the world (including other's internal states), but not always.Therefore, it is logically absurd to assume persons are always in error about their own mental states and judgementsabout the nature of the mind itself.

Other forms of dualism

Four varieties of dualism. The arrows indicate the direction of the causal interactions.Occasionalism is not shown.

1.Psychophysical parallelism, orsimply

parallelism

, is the view thatmind and body, while havingdistinct ontological statuses, do notcausally influence one another.Instead, they run along parallelpaths (mind events causally interactwith mind events and brain eventscausally interact with brain events) and only seem to influence each other.

[36]

This view was most prominentlydefended by Gottfried Leibniz. Although Leibniz was an ontological monist who believed that only one type of substance, the monad, exists in the universe, and that everything is reducible to it, he nonetheless maintained thatthere was an important distinction between "the mental" and "the physical" in terms of causation. He held that

Nonreductive physicalism331God had arranged things in advance so that minds and bodies would be in harmony with each other. This isknown as the doctrine of pre-established harmony.

[37]

2.Occasionalism is the view espoused by Nicholas Malebranche which asserts that all supposedly causal relationsbetween physical events, or between physical and mental events, are not really causal at all. While body and mindare different substances, causes (whether mental or physical) are related to their effects by an act of God'sintervention on each specific occasion.

[38]

3.Property dualism, is the view that the world is constituted of just one kind of substance - the physical kind - thereexist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties. In other words, it is the view thatnon-physical, mental properties (such as beliefs, desires and emotions) inhere in some physical substances(namely brains).1.Strong emergentism asserts that when matter is organized in the appropriate way (i.e. in the way that livinghuman bodies are organized), mental properties emerge. Hence, it is a form of emergent materialism.

[9]

Theseemergent properties have an independent ontological status and cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of,the physical substrate from which they emerge. A form of property dualism has been espoused by DavidChalmers and the concept has undergone something of a renaissance in recent years,

[39]

but was alreadysuggested in the 19th century by William James.2.Epiphenomenalism is a doctrine first formulated by Thomas Henry Huxley.

[40]

It consists of the view thatmental phenomena are causally ineffectual, where one or more mental states do not have any influence onphysical states. Physical events can cause other physical events and physical events can cause mental events,but mental events cannot cause anything, since they are just causally inert by-products (i.e. epiphenomena) of the physical world.

[36]

This view has been defended most strongly in recent times by Frank Jackson.

[41]

3.Non-reductive Physicalism is the view that mental properties form a separate ontological class to physicalproperties: mental states (such as qualia) are not reducible to physical states. The ontological stance towardsqualia in the case of non-reductive physicalism does not imply that qualia are causally inert; this is whatdistinguishes it from epiphenomenalism.4.Panpsychism is the view that allmatter has a mental aspect, or, alternatively, all objects have a unified center of experience or point of view. Superficially, it seems to be a form of property dualism, since it regardseverything as having both mental and physical properties. However, some panpsychists say mechanicalbehaviour is derived from primitive mentality of atoms and molecules

—

as are sophisticated mentality andorganic behaviour, the difference being attributed to the presence or absence of complex structure in acompound object. So long as the

reduction

of non-mental properties to mental ones is in place, panpsychism isnot a (strong) form of property dualism; otherwise it is.

Monist solutions to the mind

–

body problem

In contrast to dualism, monism does not accept any fundamental divisions. The fundamentally disseparate nature of reality has beencentral to forms of eastern philosophies for over twomillennia. In Indian and Chinese philosophy, monism is integral to how experience is understood.Today, the most common formsof monism in Western philosophy are physicalist.

[11]

Physicalistic monism asserts that the only existing substance is physical, in somesense of that term to be clarified by our best science.

[42]

However, a variety of formulations (see below) are possible.Another form of monism, idealism, states that the only existing substance is mental. Although pure idealism, such asthat of George Berkeley, is uncommon in contemporary Western philosophy, a more sophisticated variant calledpanpsychism, according to which mental experience and properties may be at the foundation of physical experienceand properties, has been espoused by some philosophers such as Alfred North Whitehead and David Ray Griffin.

[39]

Phenomenalism is the theory that representations (or sense data) of external objects are all that exist. Such a viewwas briefly adopted by Bertrand Russell and many of the logical positivists during the early 20th century.

[43]

A thirdpossibility is to accept the existence of a basic substance which is neither physical nor mental. The mental and

Nonreductive physicalism332physical would then both be properties of this neutral substance. Such a position was adopted by Baruch Spinoza

[10]

and was popularized by Ernst Mach

[44]

in the 19th century. This neutral monism, as it is called, resembles propertydualism.

Physicalistic monisms

Behaviorism

Behaviorism dominated philosophy of mind for much of the 20th century, especially the first half.

[11]

In psychology,behaviorism developed as a reaction to the inadequacies of introspectionism.

[42]

Introspective reports on one's owninterior mental life are not subject to careful examination for accuracy and cannot be used to form predictivegeneralizations. Without generalizability and the possibility of third-person examination, the behaviorists argued,psychology cannot be scientific.

[42]

The way out, therefore, was to eliminate the idea of an interior mental life (andhence an ontologically independent mind) altogether and focus instead on the description of observable behavior.

[45]

Parallel to these developments in psychology, a philosophical behaviorism (sometimes called logical behaviorism)was developed.

[42]

This is characterized by a strong verificationism, which generally considers unverifiablestatements about interior mental life senseless. For the behaviorist, mental states are not interior states on which onecan make introspective reports. They are just descriptions of behavior or dispositions to behave in certain ways,made by third parties to explain and predict others' behavior.

[46]

Philosophical behaviorism has fallen out of favor since the latter half of the 20th century, coinciding with the rise of cognitivism.

[2]

Cognitivists reject behaviorism due to several perceived problems. For example, behaviorism couldbe said to be counter-intuitive when it maintains that someone is talking about behavior in the event that a person isexperiencing a painful headache.

Identity theory

Type physicalism (or type-identity theory) was developed by John Smart

[18]

and Ullin Place

[47]

as a direct reaction tothe failure of behaviorism. These philosophers reasoned that, if mental states are something material, but notbehavioral, then mental states are probably identical to internal states of the brain. In very simplified terms: a mentalstate

M

is nothing other than brain state

B

. The mental state "desire for a cup of coffee" would thus be nothing morethan the "firing of certain neurons in certain brain regions".

[18]

Nonreductive physicalism333

The classic Identity theory and Anomalous Monism in contrast. Forthe Identity theory, every token instantiation of a single mental typecorresponds (as indicated by the arrows) to a physical token of asingle physical type. For anomalous monism, the token-tokencorrespondences can fall outside of the type-type correspondences.The result is token identity.

Despite its initial plausibility, the identity theory facesa strong challenge in the form of the thesis of multiplerealizability, first formulated by Hilary Putnam.

[20]

It isobvious that not only humans, but many differentspecies of animals can, for example, experience pain.However, it seems highly unlikely that all of thesediverse organisms with the same pain experience are inthe same identical brain state. And if the latter is thecase, then pain cannot be identical to a specific brainstate. The identity theory is thus empiricallyunfounded.

[20]

On the other hand, even granted all above, it does notfollow that identity theories of all types must beabandoned. According to token identity theories, thefact that a certain brain state is connected with only onemental state of a person does not have to mean thatthere is an absolute correlation between types of mentalstates and types of brain state. The type-tokendistinction can be illustrated by a simple example: theword "green" contains four types of letters (g, r, e, n)with two tokens (occurrences) of the letter

e

along withone each of the others. The idea of token identity is that only particular occurrences of mental events are identicalwith particular occurrences or tokenings of physical events.

[48]

Anomalous monism (see below) and most othernon-reductive physicalisms are token-identity theories.

[49]

Despite these problems, there is a renewed interest in thetype identity theory today, primarily due to the influence of Jaegwon Kim.

[18]

Functionalism

Functionalism was formulated by Hilary Putnam and Jerry Fodor as a reaction to the inadequacies of the identitytheory.

[20]

Putnam and Fodor saw mental states in terms of an empirical computational theory of the mind.

[50]

Atabout the same time or slightly after, D.M. Armstrong and David Kellogg Lewis formulated a version of functionalism which analyzed the mental concepts of folk psychology in terms of functional roles.

[51]

Finally,Wittgenstein's idea of meaning as use led to a version of functionalism as a theory of meaning, further developed byWilfrid Sellars and Gilbert Harman. Another one, psychofunctionalism, is an approach adopted by naturalisticPhilosophy of Mind associated with Jerry Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn.What all these different varieties of functionalism share in common is the thesis that mental states are characterizedby their causal relations with other mental states and with sensory inputs and behavioral outputs. That is,functionalism abstracts away from the details of the physical implementation of a mental state by characterizing it interms of non-mental functional properties. For example, a kidney is characterized scientifically by its functional rolein filtering blood and maintaining certain chemical balances. From this point of view, it does not really matterwhether the kidney be made up of organic tissue, plastic nanotubes or silicon chips: it is the role that it plays and itsrelations to other organs that define it as a kidney.

[50]

Nonreductive physicalism334

Nonreductive physicalism

Non reductionist philosophers hold firmly to two essential convictions with regard to mind-body relations: 1)Physicalism is true and mental states must be physical states, but 2) All reductionist proposals are unsatisfactory:mental states cannot be reduced to behavior, brain states or functional states.

[42]

Hence, the question arises whetherthere can still be a non-reductive physicalism. Donald Davidson's anomalous monism

[19]

is an attempt to formulatesuch a physicalism.Davidson uses the thesis of supervenience: mental states supervene on physical states, but are not reducible to them."Supervenience" therefore describes a functional dependence: there can be no change in the mental without somechange in the physical

–

causal reducibility between the mental and physical without ontological reducibility.

[52]

Because nonreductive physicalist theories attempt to both retain the ontological distinction between mind and bodyand to try to solve the 'surfeit of explanations puzzle' in some way; critics often see this as a paradox and point outthe similarities to epiphenomenalism, in that it is the brain that is seen as the root 'cause' not the mind, and the mindseems to be rendered inert.Epiphenomenalism regards one or more mental states as the byproduct of physical brain states, having no influenceon physical states. The interaction is one-way (solving the 'surfeit of explanations puzzle') but leaving us withnon-reducible mental states (as a byproduct of brain states) - both ontologically and causally irreducible to physicalstates. Pain would be seen by epiphenomenaliasts as being caused by the brain state but as not having effects onother brain states, though it might have effects on other mental states (i.e. cause distress).

Emergentism

Emergentism is a form of "nonreductive physicalism" that involves a layered view of nature, with the layers arrangedin terms of increasing complexity and each corresponding to its own special science. Some philosophers hold thatemergent properties causally interact with more fundamental levels, while others maintain that higher-orderproperties simply supervene over lower levels without direct causal interaction. The latter group therefore holds aless strict, or "weaker", definition of emergentism, which can be rigorously stated as follows: a property P of composite object O is emergent if it is metaphysically impossible for another object to lack property P if that objectis composed of parts with intrinsic properties identical to those in O and has those parts in an identical configuration.Sometimes emergentists use the example of water having a new property when Hydrogen H and Oxygen O combineto form H2O (water). In this example there "emerges" a new property of a transparent liquid that would not havebeen predicted by understanding hydrogen and oxygen as a gas. This is analogous to physical properties of the braingiving rise to a mental state. Emergentists try to solve the notorious mind-body gap this way. One problem foremergentism is the idea of "causal closure" in the world that does not allow for a mind-to-body causation.

[53]

Expressional Philosophy states that there are no dualisms, only that which is expressed, as Water is to the dualisticH20 in the above example. Mind emerges from processes of matter and the energy these processes bring about. AlEngleman proposes in "Expressions: A Philosophy of Mind", a finality to William Blake's "I am My Mind", bystating that all Matter and Energy is Mind, what he calls Proto-Mind, and from this Proto-Mind's processes, athreshold barrier is overcome, and Life emerges as Self-Working Energy (Mind). This is called ExpressionalEmergence, in much the same way Genetic Biologists understand the Genotype-Phenotype Expression.

[54]

Nonreductive physicalism335

Eliminative materialism

If one is a materialist and believes that all aspects of our common sense psychology will find reduction to a maturecognitive-neuroscience, and that non-reductive materialism is mistaken, then one can adopt a final, more radicalposition: eliminative materialism.There are several varieties of eliminative materialism, but all maintain that our common-sense "folk psychology"badly misrepresents the nature of some aspect of cognition. Eliminativists regard folk psychology as a falsifiabletheory, and one likely to be falsified by future cognitive-neuroscientific research. Should better theories of themental come along they argue, we might need to discard certain basic common-sense mental notions that we havealways taken for granted, such as belief, consciousness, emotion, qualia, or propositional attitudes.Eliminativists such as Patricia and Paul Churchland argue that while folk psychology treats cognition asfundamentally sentence-like, the non-linguistic vector/matrix model of neural network theory or connectionism willprove to be a much more accurate account of how the brain works.

[16]

The Churchlands often invoke the fate of other, erroneous popular theories and ontologies which have arisen in thecourse of history.

[16]

[17]

For example, Ptolemaic astronomy served to explain and roughly predict the motions of theplanets for centuries, but eventually this model of the solar system was eliminated in favor of the Copernican model.The Churchlands believe the same eliminative fate awaits the "sentence-cruncher" model of the mind in whichthought and behavior are the result of manipulating sentence-like states called "propositional attitudes."

Linguistic criticism of the mind

–

body problem

Each attempt to answer the mind-body problem encounters substantial problems. Some philosophers argue that thisis because thereis an underlying conceptual confusion.

[55]

These philosophers, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and hisfollowers in thetradition of linguisticcriticism, therefore rejectthe problem as illusory.

[56]

They argue that it is anerror to ask how mental and biological states fit together. Ratheritshould simply be accepted that human experience can be described in different ways

—

for instance, in a mental and in a biological vocabulary. Illusory problems ariseif one tries to describe the one in terms of the other's vocabulary or if the mental vocabulary is used in the wrongcontexts.

[56]

This is the case, for instance, if one searches for mental states of the brain. The brain is simply thewrong context for the use of mental vocabulary

—

the search for mental states of the brain is therefore a categoryerror or a sort of fallacy of reasoning.

[56]

Today, such a position is often adopted by interpreters of Wittgenstein such as Peter Hacker.

[55]

However, HilaryPutnam, the originator of functionalism, has also adopted the position that the mind-body problem is an illusoryproblem which should be dissolved according to the manner of Wittgenstein.

[57]

Externalism and internalism

Where is the mind located? If the mind is a physical phenomenon of some kind, it has to be located somewhere.There are two possible options: either the mind is internal to the body (internalism) or the mind is external to it(externalism). More generally, either the mind depends only on events and properties taking place inside the subject'sbody or it depends also on factors external to it.Proponents of internalism are committed to the view that neural activity is sufficient to produce the mind.Proponents of externalism maintain that the surrounding world is in some sense constitutive of the mind.Externalism differentiates into several versions. The main ones are semantic externalism, cognitive externalism,phenomenal externalism. Each of these versions of externalism can further be divided whether they refer only to thecontent or to the vehicles of mind.Semantic externalism holds that the semantic content of the mind is totally or partially defined by state of affairsexternal to the body of the subject. Hilary Putnam's Twin earth thought experiment is a good example.

Nonreductive physicalism336Cognitive externalism is a very broad collections of views that suggests the role of the environment, of tools, of development, and of the body in fleshing out cognition. Embodied cognition, The extended mind, enactivism aregood example.Phenomenal externalism suggests that the phenomenal aspects of the mind are external to the body. Authors whoaddressed this possibility are Ted Honderich, Edwin Holt, Francois Tonneau, Kevin O'Regan, Riccardo Manzotti,Teed Rockwell.

Naturalism and its problems

The thesis of physicalism is that the mind is part of the material (or physical) world. Such a position faces theproblem that the mind has certain properties that no other material thing seems to possess. Physicalism musttherefore explain how it is possible that these properties can nonetheless emerge from a material thing. The project of providing such an explanation is often referred to as the "naturalization of the mental."

[42]

Some of the crucialproblems that this project attempts to resolve include the existence of qualia and the nature of intentionality.

[42]

Qualia

Many mental states seem to be experienced subjectively in different ways by different individuals.

[24]

And it ischaracteristic of a mental state that it has some experiential

quality

, e.g. of pain, that it hurts. However, the sensationof pain between two individuals may not be identical, since no one has a perfect way to measure how muchsomething hurts or of describing exactly how it feels to hurt. Philosophers and scientists therefore ask where theseexperiences come from. The existence of cerebral events, in and of themselves, cannot explain why they areaccompanied by these corresponding qualitative experiences. The puzzle of why many cerebral processes occur withan accompanying experiential aspect in consciousness seems impossible to explain.

[23]

Yet it also seems to many that science will eventually have to explain such experiences.

[42]

This follows from anassumption about the possibility of reductive explanations. According to this view, if an attempt can be successfullymade to explain a phenomenon reductively (e.g., water), then it can be explained why the phenomenon has all of itsproperties (e.g., fluidity, transparency).

[42]

In the case of mental states, this means that there needs to be anexplanation of why they have the property of being experienced in a certain way.The 20th century German philosopher Martin Heidegger criticized the ontological assumptions underpinning such areductive model, and claimed that it was impossible to make sense of experience in these terms. This is because,according to Heidegger, the nature of our subjective experience and its

qualities

is impossible to understand in termsof Cartesian "substances" that bear "properties." Another way to put this is that the very concept of qualitativeexperience is incoherent in terms of

—

or is semantically incommensurable with the concept of

—

substances that bearproperties.

[58]

This problem of explaining introspective first-person aspects of mental states andconsciousness ingeneral in terms of third-personquantitative neuroscience is called the explanatory gap.

[59]

There are several different views of thenature of this gap among contemporary philosophers of mind. David Chalmers and the early Frank Jackson interpretthe gap as ontological in nature; that is, they maintain that qualia can never be explained by science becausephysicalism is false. There are two separate categories involved and one cannot be reduced to the other.

[60]

Analternative view is taken by philosophers such as Thomas Nagel and Colin McGinn. According to them, the gap isepistemological in nature. For Nagel, science is not yet able to explain subjective experience because it has not yetarrived at the level or kind of knowledge that is required. We are not even able to formulate the problemcoherently.

[24]

For McGinn, on other hand, the problem is one of permanent and inherent biological limitations. Weare not able to resolve the explanatory gap because the realm of subjective experiences is cognitively closed to us inthe same manner that quantum physics is cognitively closed to elephants.

[61]

Other philosophers liquidate the gap aspurely a semantic problem. This semantical problem, of course, led to the famous "

Qualia Question

", which is:

Does Red cause Redness

?

Nonreductive physicalism337

Intentionality

John Searle

—

one of the most influentialphilosophers of mind, proponent of biologicalnaturalism (Berkeley 2002)

Intentionality is the capacity of mental states to be directed towards(

about

) or be in relation with something in the external world.

[22]

Thisproperty of mental states entails that they have contents and semanticreferents and can therefore be assigned truth values. When one tries toreduce these states to natural processes there arises a problem: naturalprocesses are not true or false, they simply happen.

[62]

It would notmake any sense to say that a natural process is true or false. But mentalideas or judgments are true or false, so how then can mental states(ideas or judgments) be natural processes? The possibility of assigningsemantic value to ideas must mean that such ideas are about facts.Thus, for example, the idea that Herodotus was a historian refers toHerodotus and to the fact that he was an historian. If the fact is true,then the idea is true; otherwise, it is false. But where does this relationcome from? In the brain, there are only electrochemical processes andthese seem not to have anything to do with Herodotus.

[21]

Philosophy of mind and science

Humans are corporeal beings and, as such, they are subject to examination and description by the natural sciences.Since mental processes are intimately related to bodily processes, the descriptions that the natural sciences furnish of human beings play an important role in the philosophy of mind.

[2]

There are many scientific disciplines that studyprocesses related to the mental. The list of such sciences includes: biology, computer science, cognitive science,cybernetics, linguistics, medicine, pharmacology, and psychology.

[63]

Neurobiology

The theoretical background of biology, as is the case with modern natural sciences in general, is fundamentallymaterialistic. The objects of study are, in the first place, physical processes, which are considered to be thefoundations of mental activity and behavior.

[64]

The increasing success of biology in the explanation of mentalphenomena can be seen by the absence of any empirical refutation of its fundamental presupposition: "there can beno change in the mental states of a person without a change in brain states."

[63]

Within the field of neurobiology, there are many subdisciplines which are concerned with the relations betweenmental and physical states and processes:

[64]

Sensory neurophysiology investigates the relation between theprocesses of perception and stimulation.

[65]

Cognitive neuroscience studies the correlations between mentalprocesses and neural processes.

[65]

Neuropsychology describes the dependence of mental faculties on specificanatomical regions of the brain.

[65]

Lastly, evolutionary biology studies the origins and development of the humannervous system and, in as much as this is the basis of the mind, also describes the ontogenetic and phylogeneticdevelopment of mental phenomena beginning from their most primitive stages.

[63]

Nonreductive physicalism338

Since the 1980s, sophisticated neuroimagingprocedures, such as fMRI (above), have furnishedincreasing knowledge about the workings of thehuman brain, shedding light on ancientphilosophical problems.

The methodological breakthroughs of the neurosciences, in particularthe introduction of high-tech neuroimaging procedures, has propelledscientists toward the elaboration of increasingly ambitious researchprograms: one of the main goals is to describe and comprehend theneural processes which correspond to mental functions (see: neuralcorrelate).

[64]

Several groups are inspired by these advances.

Computer science

Computer science concerns itself with the automatic processing of information (or at least with physical systems of symbols to whichinformation is assigned) by means of such things as computers.

[66]

From the beginning, computer programmers have been able to developprograms which permit computers to carry out tasks for which organicbeings need a mind. A simple example is multiplication. But it is clearthat computers do not use a mind to multiply. Could they, someday, come to have what we call a mind? Thisquestion has been propelled into the forefront of much philosophical debate because of investigations in the field of artificial intelligence.Within AI, it is common to distinguish between a modest research program and a more ambitious one: thisdistinction was coined by John Searle in terms of a weak AI and strong AI. The exclusive objective of "weak AI",according to Searle, is the successful simulation of mental states, with no attempt to make computers becomeconscious or aware, etc. The objective of strong AI, on the contrary, is a computer with consciousness similar to thatof human beings.

[67]

The program of strong AI goes back to one of the pioneers of computation Alan Turing. As ananswer to the question "Can computers think?", he formulated the famous Turing test.

[68]

Turing believed that acomputer could be said to "think" when, if placed in a room by itself next to another room which contained a humanbeing and with the same questions being asked of both the computer and the human being by a third party humanbeing, the computer's responses turned out to be indistinguishable from those of the human. Essentially, Turing'sview of machine intelligence followed the behaviourist model of the mind

—

intelligence is as intelligence does. TheTuring test has received many criticisms, among which the most famous is probably the Chinese room thoughtexperiment formulated by Searle.

[67]

The question about the possible sensitivity (qualia) of computers or robots still remains open. Some computerscientists believe that the specialty of AI can still make new contributions to the resolution of the "mind bodyproblem". They suggest that based on the reciprocal influences between software and hardware that takes place in allcomputers, it is possible that someday theories can be discovered that help us to understand the reciprocal influencesbetween the human mind and the brain (wetware).

[69]

Psychology

Psychology is the science that investigates mental states directly. It uses generally empirical methods to investigateconcrete mental states like joy, fear or obsessions. Psychology investigates the laws that bind these mental states toeach other or with inputs and outputs to the human organism.

[70]

An example of this is the psychology of perception. Scientists working in this field have discovered generalprinciples of the perception of forms. A law of the psychology of forms says that objects that move in the samedirection are perceived as related to each other.

[63]

This law describes a relation between visual input and mentalperceptual states. However, it does not suggest anything about the nature of perceptual states. The laws discoveredby psychology are compatible with all the answers to the mind-body problem already described.

Nonreductive physicalism339

Philosophy of mind in the continental tradition

Most of the discussion in this article has focused on one style or tradition of philosophy in modern Western culture,usually called analytic philosophy (sometimes described as Anglo-American philosophy).

[71]

Many other schools of thought exist, however, which are sometimes subsumed under the broad label of continental philosophy.

[71]

In anycase, though topics and methods here are numerous, in relation to the philosophy of mind the various schools thatfall under this label (phenomenology, existentialism, etc.) can globally be seen to differ from the analytic school inthat they focus less on language and logical analysis alone but also take in other forms of understanding humanexistence and experience. With reference specifically to the discussion of the mind, this tends to translate intoattempts to grasp the concepts of thought and perceptual experience in some sense that does not merely involve theanalysis of linguistic forms.

[71]

In Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's

Phenomenology of Mind

, Hegel discusses three distinct types of mind: the'subjective mind', the mind of an individual; the 'objective mind', the mind of society and of the State; and the'Absolute mind', a unity of all concepts. See also Hegel's

Philosophy of Mind

from his

Encyclopedia

.

[72]

In modern times, the two main schools that have developed in response or opposition to this Hegelian tradition arephenomenology and existentialism. Phenomenology, founded by Edmund Husserl, focuses on the contents of thehuman mind (see noema) and how phenomenological processes shape our experiences.

[73]

Existentialism, a schoolof thought founded upon the work of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, focuses on the content of experiences and how the mind deals with such experiences.

Philosophy of mind in Buddhism

"If one were to ask, 'Which aging & death? And whose is this aging & death?' and if one were to ask, 'Isaging & death one thing, and is this the aging & death of someone/something else?' both of them wouldhave the same meaning, even though their words would differ. When there is the view that the

jiva

is thesame as the body, there isn't the leading of the holy life. And when there is the view that the

jiva

is onething and the body another, there isn't the leading of the holy life. Avoiding these two extremes, theTathagata points out the Dhamma in between: From birth as a requisite condition comes aging &death."

[74]

Eastern traditions such as Buddhism do not hold to the dualistic mind/body model but do assert that the mind andbody are separate entities. Buddhism in particular does not hold to the notion of a soul, or ātman. Some forms of Buddhism assert that a very subtle level of mind leaves the body at the time of death and goes to a new life.According to Buddhist scholar Dharmakirti, the definition of mind is that which is clarity and cognizes. In thisdefinition, 'clarity' refers to the nature of mind, and 'cognizes' to the function of mind. Mind is clarity because italways lacks form and because it possesses the actual power to perceive objects. Mind cognizes because its functionis to know or perceive objects. In

Ornament of the Seven Sets

, Buddhist scholar Khedrubje says that thought,awareness, mind and cognizer are synonyms. Buddha explained that although mind lacks form, it can nevertheless berelated to form. Thus, our mind is related to our body and is "located" at different places throughout the body. This isto be understood in the context of how the five sense consciousnesses and the mental consciousness are generated.There are many different types of mind

—

sense awarenesses, mental awarenesses, gross minds, subtle minds, andvery subtle minds

—

and they are all formless (lacking shape, color, sound, smell, taste or tactile properties) and theyall function to cognize or know. There is no such thing as a mind without an object known by that mind. Eventhough none of these minds is form, they can be related to form.

[75]

Nonreductive physicalism340

Consequences of philosophy of mind

There are countless subjects that are affected by the ideas developed in the philosophy of mind. Clear examples of this are the nature of death and its definitive character, the nature of emotion, of perception and of memory.Questions about what a person is and what his or her identity consists of also have much to do with the philosophy of mind. There are two subjects that, in connection with the philosophy of the mind, have aroused special attention: freewill and the self.

[2]

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.

[2]

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 humanbehavior 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.

[76]

This argumentation is rejected, on the one hand, by the compatibilists. Those who adopt this position suggest that thequestion "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 indetermination. Afree act is one where the agent could have done otherwise if it had chosen otherwise. In this sense a person can befree even though determinism is true.

[76]

The most important compatibilist in the history of the philosophy wasDavid Hume.

[77]

More recently, this position is defended, for example, by Daniel Dennett,.

[78]

On the other hand, there are also many incompatibilists who reject the argument because they believe that the will isfree in a stronger sense called libertarianism.

[76]

These philosophers affirm the course of the world is either a) notcompletely determined by natural law where natural law is intercepted by physically independent agency,

[79]

b)determined by indeterministic natural law only, or c) determined by indeterministic natural law in line with thesubjective effort of physically non-reducible agency.

[80]

Under Libertarianism, the will does not have to bedeterministic and, therefore, it is potentially free. Critics of the second proposition (b) accuse the incompatibilists of using an incoherent concept of freedom. They argue as follows: if our will is not determined by anything, then wedesire what we desire by pure chance. And if what we desire is purely accidental, we are not free. So if our will isnot determined by anything, we are not free.

[76]

The self

The philosophy of mind also has important consequences for the concept of self. If by "self" or "I" one refers to anessential, immutable nucleus of the

person

, most modern philosophers of mind will affirm that no such thingexists.

[81]

The idea of a self as an immutable essential nucleus derives from the idea of an immaterial soul. Such anidea is unacceptable to most contemporary philosophers, due to their physicalistic orientations, and due to a generalacceptance among philosophers of the scepticism of the concept of 'self' by David Hume, who could never catchhimself doing, thinking or feeling anything.

[82]

However, in the light of empirical results from developmentalpsychology, developmental biology and neuroscience, the idea of an essential inconstant, material nucleus

—

anintegrated representational system distributed over changing patterns of synaptic connections

—

seems reasonable.

[83]

The view of the self as an illusion is accepted by some philosophers, including Daniel Dennett.

Nonreductive physicalism341

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, Routledge.[52]Stanton, W.L. (1983) "Supervenience and Psychological Law in Anomalous Monism",

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly

64: 72-9[53]Jaegwon Kim, Philosophy of Mind, Westview Press; 2 edition (July 8, 2005) ISBN 0-8133-4269-4[54]AL Engleman, "Expressions: A Philosophy of Mind", Cafe Press (2005), CafePress.com/1CoolPhilosophy[55]Hacker, Peter (2003).

Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience

. Blackwel Pub.. ISBN 1-4051-0838-X.[56]Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1954).

Philosophical Investigations

. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0-631-14660-1.[57]Putnam, Hilary (2000).

The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World

. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-10286-0.[58]Hubert Dreyfus, "Critique of Descartes I" (recorded lecture), University of California at Berkeley, Sept. 18, 2007.[59]Joseph Levine,

Materialism and Qualia: The Explanatory Gap

, in:

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly

, vol. 64, no. 4, October, 1983, 354

–

361[60]Jackson, F. (1986) "What Mary didn't Know", Journal of Philosophy, 83, 5, pp. 291

–

295.[61]McGinn, C. "Can the Mind-Body Problem Be Solved",

Mind

, New Series, Volume 98, Issue 391, pp. 349

–

366. a (online) (http://art-mind.org/review/IMG/pdf/McGinn_1989_Mind-body-problem_M.

pdf)[62]Fodor, Jerry (1993).

Psychosemantics. The problem of meaning in the philosophy of mind

. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-06106-6.[63]Pinker, S. (1997)

How the Mind Works

. tr. It:

Come Funziona la Mente

. Milan:Mondadori, 2000. ISBN 88-04-49908-7[64]Bear, M. F. et al. Eds. (1995).

Neuroscience: Exploring The Brain

. Baltimore, Maryland, Williams and Wilkins. ISBN 0-7817-3944-6[65]Pinel, J.P.J (1997).

Psychobiology

. Prentice Hall. ISBN 88-15-07174-1.[66]Sipser, M. (1998).

Introduction to the Theory of Computation

. Boston, Mass.: PWS Publishing Co.. ISBN 0-534-94728-X.[67]Searle, John (1980). "Minds, Brains and Programs".

The Behavioral and Brain Sciences

(3): 417

–

424.[68]Turing, Alan (October 1950), "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (http://loebner.

net/Prizef/TuringArticle.

html),

Mind

LIX

(236):433

–

460, doi:10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433, ISSN 0026-4423, , retrieved 2008-08-18[69]Russell, S. and Norvig, R. (1995).

Artificial Intelligence:A Modern Approach

. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc.. ISBN 0-13-103805-2.[70]"Encyclopedia of Psychology" (http://www.

psychology.org). .[71]Dummett, M. (2001).

Origini della Filosofia Analitica

. Einaudi. ISBN 88-06-15286-6.[72]Hegel, G.W.F.

Phenomenology of Spirit

. ISBN 0-19-503169-5., translated by A.V. Miller with analysis of the text and foreword by J. N.Findlay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977) ISBN 0-19-824597-1 .[73]Husserl, Edmund.

Logische Untersuchungen

. ISBN 3050043911. trans.: Giovanni Piana. Milan: EST. ISBN 88-428-0949-7[74]

Avijjapaccaya Sutta

:http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.

035.than.

html[75]

Understanding the Mind

: The Nature and Power of the Mind, Tharpa Publications (2nd. ed., 1997) ISBN 978-0-948006-78-4[76]"Philosopher Ted Honderich's Determinism web resource" (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwIntroIndex.

htm). .[77]Russell, Paul,

Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume's Way of Naturalizing Responsibility

Oxford University Press: New York & Oxford,1995.[78]Dennett, Daniel (1984).

The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting

. Cambridge MA: Bradford Books-MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-54042-8.[79]Descartes, René (1649).

Passions of the Soul

. ISBN 0-87220-035-3.[80]Kane, Robert (2009). "Libertarianism" (http://www.

springerlink.com/content/g2vg712u87804766).

Philosophical Studies

(SpringerNetherlands)

144

(1): 39. doi:10.1007/s11098-009-9365-y. .[81]Dennett, C. and Hofstadter, D.R. (1981).

The Mind's I

. Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-01412-9.[82]Searle, John (Jan 2005).

Mind: A Brief Introduction

. Oxford University Press Inc, USA. ISBN 0-19-515733-8.[83]LeDoux, Joseph (2002).

The Synaptic Self

. New York: Viking Penguin. ISBN 88-7078-795-8.

Further reading

•Wikibooks: Consciousness Studies•The London Philosophy Study Guide (http://www.ucl.

ac.

uk/philosophy/LPSG/) offers many suggestions onwhat to read, depending on the student's familiarity with the subject: Philosophy of Mind (http://www.

ucl.

ac.uk/philosophy/LPSG/Mind.

htm)•AL Engleman "Expressions: A Philosophy of Mind" (CafePress, 2005)•Richard Rorty,

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

(Princeton, 1980), p. 120, 125.•Pedro Jesús Teruel,

Mente, cerebro y antropología en Kant

(Madrid, 2008). ISBN 978-84-309-4688-4.•Alfred North Whitehead

Science and the Modern World

(1925; reprinted London, 1985), pp. 68

–

70.•Edwin Burtt

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science

, 2nd ed. (London, 1932), pp. 318

–

19.•Felix Deutsch (ed.)

On the Mysterious Leap from the Mind to the Body

(New York, 1959).

Nonreductive physicalism343•Herbert Feigl

The "Mental" and the "Physical": The Essay and a Postscript (1967)

(http://ditext.

com/feigl/mp/ mp.

html), in H. Feigl et al., (eds.),

Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science

(Minneapolis, 1958), Vol. 2,pp. 370

–

497, at p. 373.•Celia Green

The Lost Cause: Causation and the Mind-Body Problem

. (Oxford: Oxford Forum, 2003). Applies asceptical view on causality to the problems of interactionism.•Gyatso, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso,

Understanding the Mind

: The Nature and Power of the Mind, TharpaPublications (2nd. ed., 1997) ISBN 978-0-948006-78-4•Scott Robert Sehon, Teleological Realism: Mind, Agency and Explanation (http://mitpress.

mit.

edu/catalog/ item/default.

asp?ttype=2&tid=10693). Cambridge: MIT University Press, 2005.

External links

•Guide to Philosophy of Mind (http://consc.

net/guide.html), compiled by David Chalmers.•Research articles in Philosophy of Mind - PhilPapers (http://philpapers.

org/browse/philosophy-of-mind)(Successor of MindPapers below)•MindPapers: A Bibliography of the Philosophy of Mind and the Science of Consciousness (http://consc.net/ mindpapers), compiled by David Chalmers (Editor) & David Bourget (Assistant Editor).•Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind (http://philosophy.

uwaterloo.

ca/MindDict/), edited by Chris Eliasmith.•An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (http://www.galilean-library.

org/int14.html), by Paul Newall,aimed at beginners.•A list of online papers on consciousness and philosophy of mind (http://consc.

net/online.

html), compiled byDavid Chalmers•Field guide to the Philosophy of Mind (http://host.

uniroma3.it/progetti/kant/field/)•The Argument from Physical Minds (http://www.

infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/atheism/minds.html)•The Mind and the Brain (http://www.

beyondthemind.

net/mindandbrain.

html) A site exploring J.Krishnamurti's view of the Mind.•Mind Field: The Playground of Gods (http://www.

ahymsin.

org/main/index.php/Swami-Veda-Bharati/ mind-field.

html), from the Indian Psychology series by Swami Veda Bharati.

Noumena344

Noumena

"Noumena" redirects here. For the band, see Noumena (band).

The

noumenon

/

ˈ

nu

ː

m

ɪ

n

ɒ

n/ is a posited object or event that is known (if at all) without the use of the senses.

[1]

The term is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to "phenomenon", which refers to anything that appears to,or is an object of, the senses. In Ancient philosophy, the noumenal realm was equated with the world of ideas knownto the philosophical mind, in contrast to the phenomenal realm, which was equated with the world of sensory reality,known to the uneducated mind.

[2]

Modern philosophy has generally denied the possibility of knowledge independentof the senses, and Immanuel Kant gave this point of view its classical version, saying that the noumenal world mayexist, but it is completely unknowable to humans. In Kantian philosophy the unknowable noumenon is often linkedto the unknowable "thing-in-itself" (

Ding an sich

), although how to characterize the nature of the relationship is aquestion yet open to some controversy.Noumenon does not refer to "numinous", a term coined by Rudolf Otto who, though well versed in Kant, drew theterm from the Latin word

numen

which means deity, divine will or divine presence.

Etymology

Noumenon

(νοούμενoν) is a Greek word. It is the medium-passive present participle of νοεῖν (

noein

), "I think, Imean". Thus a rough equivalent in English would be "something that is thought", or "the object of an act of thought".The plural is

noumena

(νοούμενα).

Noein

in turn originates from the word "nous" (roughly, "mind").

Usage in reference to pre-Kantian philosophy

Platonic Ideas and Forms are noumena, and phenomena are things displaying themselves to the senses [...] thatnoumena and the noumenal world are objects of the highest knowledge, truths, and values is Plato's principallegacy to philosophy.

—

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy

[3]

Kant's usage

Overview

Noumenon

came into its modern usage through Immanuel Kant. Its etymology derives from the Greek

nooúmenon

(thought-of) and ultimately reflects

nous

(mind).

Noumena

is the plural form. Noumenon distinguished fromphenomenon (

Erscheinung

), the latter being an observable event or physical manifestation capable of being observedby one or more of the human senses. The two words serve as interrelated technical terms in Kant's philosophy. Asexpressed in Kant's

Critique of Pure Reason,

human understanding is structured by "concepts of the understanding",or innate categories that the mind uses in order to make sense of raw unstructured experience.

[4]

By Kant's account, when we employ a concept to describe or categorize

noumena

(the objects of inquiry,investigation or analysis of the workings of the world), we are in fact employing a way of describing orcategorizing

phenomena

(the observable manifestations of those objects of inquiry, investigation or analysis). Kant positedmethods by which human beings make sense out of the interrelationships among phenomena: the concepts of the

transcendental aesthetic

, as well as that of the

transcendental analytic

,

transcendental logic

and

transcendentaldeduction

.

[5]

Taken together, Kant's "categories of understanding" are descriptions of the sum of humanreasoning that can be brought to bear in attempting to understand the world in which we exist (that is, to understand,or attempt to understand, "things in themselves"). In each instance the word "transcendental" refers to the processthat the human mind uses to increasingly understand or grasp the form of, and order among, phenomena. Kant

Noumena345asserts that to "transcend" a direct observation or experience is to use reason and classifications to strive to correlatewith the phenomena that are observed. By Kant's view, humans can make sense out of phenomena in these variousways, but can never directly know the noumena, the "things-in-themselves", the actual objects and dynamics of thenatural world. In other words, by Kant's Critique, our minds may attempt to correlate in useful ways, perhaps evenclosely accurate ways, with the structure and order of the various aspects of the universe, but cannot know these"things-in-themselves" (noumena) directly. Rather, we must infer the extent to which thoughts correspond withthings-in-themselves by our observations of the manifestations of those things that can be sensed, that is, of phenomena.

[6]

[7]

According to Kant, objects of which we are sensibly cognizant are merely representations of

unknownsomethings

—

what Kant refers to as the

transcendental object

—

as interpreted through the

a priori

or

categories of the understanding

. These

unknown somethings

are manifested within the noumenon

—

although we can never knowhow or why as our perceptions of these

unknown somethings

are bound by the limitations of the

categories of theunderstanding

and we are therefore never able to fully know the "thing-in-itself".

[8]

Noumenon and the thing-in-itself

Many accounts of Kant's philosophy treat "noumenon" and "thing-in-itself" as synonymous, and there is textualevidence for this relationship.

[9]

However, Stephen Palmquist holds that "noumenon" and "thing-in-itself" are only

loosely

synonymous in as much as they represent the same thing but viewed from two different perspectives,

[10]

[11]

and other scholars also argue that they are not identical.

[12]

Schopenhauer criticised Kant for changing the meaningof "noumenon". Opinion is of course far from unanimous.

[13]

Kant's writings show points of difference betweennoumena and things-in-themselves. For instance, he regards things-in-themselves as existing:"...though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in a position at least tothink them as things in themselves; otherwise we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that therecan be appearance without anything that appears."

[14]

..but is much more doubtful about noumena:"But in that case a noumenon is not for our understanding a special [kind of] object, namely, anintelligible object; the [sort of] understanding to which it might belong is itself a problem. For we cannotin the least represent to ourselves the possibility of an understanding which should know its object, notdiscursively through categories, but intuitively in a non-sensible intuition".

[15]

A crucial difference between the noumenon and the thing in itself is that to call something a noumenon is to claim akind of knowledge, whereas Kant insisted that the thing in itself is unknowable. Interpreters have debated whetherthe latter claim makes sense: it seems to imply that we know at least one thing about the thing in itself (i.e., that it isunknowable). But Stephen Palmquist explains that this is part of Kant's definition of the term, to the extent thatanyone who claims to have found a way of making the thing in itself knowable must be adopting a non-Kantianposition.

[16]

Positive and negative noumena

Kant also makes a distinction between

positive

and

negative

noumena

[17]

"If by 'noumenon' we mean a thing so far as it is not an

object of our sensible intuition, and so abstract from our mode

of intuiting it, this is a noumenon in the

negative

sense of the term".

[18]

"But if we understand by it an object of a non-sensible intuition, we thereby presuppose a special modeof intuition, namely, the intellectual, which is not that which we possess, and of which we cannotcomprehend even the possibility. This would be 'noumenon' in the

positive

sense of the term."

[19]

Noumena346The positive noumena, if they existed, would roughly correspond with Plato's Forms or Idea

—

immaterial entitieswhich can only be apprehended by a special, non-sensory, faculty: "intellectual intuition".

[20]

Kant doubts that we have such a faculty, because for him intellectual intuition would mean that thinking of an entity,and its being represented, would be the same. He argues that humans have no way to apprehend the meaning of positive noumena:Since, however, such a type of intuition, intellectual intuition, forms no part whatsoever of our faculty of knowledge, it follows that the employment of the categories can never extend further than to the objectsof experience. Doubtless, indeed, there are intelligible entities corresponding to the sensible entities;there may also be intelligible entities to which our sensible faculty of intuition has no relationwhatsoever; but our concepts of understanding, being mere forms of thought for our sensible intuition,could not in the least apply to them. That, therefore, which we entitle 'noumenon' must be understood asbeing such only in a negative sense.

[21]

The noumenon as a limiting concept

Even if noumena are unknowable, they are still needed as a

limiting concept

,

[22]

Kant tells us. Without them, therewould be only phenomena, and since we have complete knowledge of our phenomena, we would in a sense knoweverything. In his own words:"Further, the concept of a noumenon is necessary, to prevent sensible intuition from being extended tothings in themselves, and thus to limit the objective validity of sensible knowledge".

[23]

"What our understanding acquires through this concept of a noumenon, is a negative extension; that is tosay, understanding is not limited through sensibility; on the contrary, it itself limits sensibility byapplying the term noumena to things in themselves (things not regarded as appearances). But in so doingit at the same time sets limits to itself, recognising that it cannot know these noumena through any of thecategories, and that it must therefore think them only under the title of an unknown something".

[24]

Furthermore, for Kant, the existence of a noumenal world limits reason to what he perceives to be its proper bounds,making many questions of traditional metaphysics, such as the existence of God, the soul, and free willunanswerable by reason. Kant derives this from his definition of knowledge as "the determination of givenrepresentations to an object."

[25]

As there are no appearances of these entities in the phenomenal, Kant is able tomake the claim that they cannot be known to a mind that works upon "such knowledge that has to do only withappearances."

[26]

These questions are ultimately the "proper object of faith, but not of reason."

[27]

The thing-in-itself

The dual-object and dual-aspect interpretations

Kantian scholars have long debated two contrasting interpretations of the thing-in-itself. One is the

dual-object

view,according to which the thing-in-itself is a distinct entity from the phenomena it gives rise to. The other is the

dual-aspect

view, according to which the thing-in-itself and the thing-as-it-appears to us are two 'sides' of the samething. This view is supported by the textual fact that "Most occurrences of the phrase "things in themselves" areshorthand for the phrase, 'things considered in themselves' (Dinge an sich selbest betrachten)."

[28]

Although wecannot

see

things apart from the way we do in fact see them, we can

think

them apart from our mode of sensibility(perception); thus making the thing-in-itself a kind of noumenon or object of thought.

Noumena347

Criticisms of Kant's noumenon

Pre Kantian critique

Though the term Noumenon did not come into common usage until Kant, the idea that undergirds it, that matter hasan absolute existence which causes it to emanate certain phenomena, had historically been subjected to criticism.George Berkeley, who pre-dated Kant, asserted that matter, independent of an observant mind, was metaphysicallyimpossible. Qualities associated with matter, such as shape, color, smell, texture, weight, temperature, and soundwere all dependent on minds, which allowed only for relative perception, not absolute perception. The completeabsence of such minds (and more importantly an omnipotent mind) would render those same qualities unobservableand even unimaginable. Berkeley called this philosophy immaterialism. Essentially there could be no such thing asmatter without a mind.

Schopenhauer's critique

Schopenhauer claimed that Kant used the word incorrectly. He explained in "Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy",which first appeared as an appendix to

The World as Will and Representation

:"But it was just this difference between abstract knowledge and knowledge of perception, entirelyoverlooked by Kant, which the ancient philosophers denoted by noumena and phenomena. (See SextusEmpiricus,

Outlines of Pyrrhonism

, Book I, Chapter 13,

' What is thought (noumena) is opposed to what appears or is perceived (phenomena).'

) This contrast and utter disproportion greatly occupied thesephilosophers in the philosophemes of the Eleatics, in Plato's doctrine of the Ideas, in the dialectic of theMegarics, and later the scholastics in the dispute between nominalism and realism, whose seed, so latein developing, was already contained in the opposite mental tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kantwho, in an unwarrantable manner, entirely neglected the thing for the expression of which those words

phenomena

and

noumena

had already been taken, now takes possession of the words, as if they werestill unclaimed, in order to denote by them his things-in-themselves and his phenomena."

[29]

The Noumenon's original meaning of "that which is thought" is not compatible with the "thing

–

in

–

itself", whichsignifies things as they exist apart from being images in the mind of an observer.

Nietzsche's critique

Friedrich Nietzsche, having been profoundly influenced by Schopenhauer's work, went on to criticise Kant'snoumenon on slightly different grounds. He later similarly criticised Schopenhauer's work. Nietzsche found fault inthe noumenon's lack of definite properties and its complete inability to interact with other things. He argued that athing in itself would necessarily be outside of any causal chain since it cannot interact with any other things withoutdemonstrating other properties than being the "ground of being". Nietzsche and later philosophers argued that thenoumenon is of an utterly indeterminate nature and that any discussion that does not treat it as such cannot, in fact,be a discussion of the noumenon. In demonstrating any definite properties, the noumenon would cease to be so.Nietzsche's criticism of the noumenon can be found, for example, in his

Beyond Good and Evil

.Nietzsche provided increasingly sophisticated accounts of the noumenon throughout the body of his work byexplaining its numerous influences and connections with other ideas. An example of such comment can be found inhis criticisms of materialistic atomism and what he called "soul-atomism", which follows Nietzsche's belief thatsynthetic judgments

a priori

are impossible. From the first chapter of

Beyond Good and Evil

:"[I]t is high time to replace the Kantian question, 'How are synthetic judgments a PRIORI possible?' byanother question, 'Why is belief in such judgments necessary?'--in effect, it is high time that we shouldunderstand that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation of creatureslike ourselves; though they still might naturally be false judgments! Or, more plainly spoken, [...]synthetic judgments a priori should not "be possible" at all [...]"

[30]

Noumena348Nietzsche then asserts that "the atomism of the soul" is connected with a belief in the existence of the thing in itself.He then attempts precisely to define that particular type of atomism:"Let it be permitted to designate by [the atomism of the soul] the belief which regards the soul assomething indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon: this belief ought to be expelledfrom science!".

[31]

In arguing that the concept of the noumenon negatively influenced other ideas in specific ways, Nietzschespecifically characterized it in those ways.Though Nietzsche was critical of theories concerning what could not be observed, he believed that theories ought tobe capable of being falsified: while arguing against what he held to be the negative influence of the Kantiannoumenon in the philosophy and science of his day, Nietzsche roughly approximated the scientific philosopher KarlPopper's assertion that falsifiability was the basis of scientific knowledge:"One can sum up all this by saying that the

criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability,or refutability, or testability

."

[32]

Nietzsche wrote in the eighteenth section of the first chapter of

Beyond Good and Evil

that"It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts themore subtle minds."

[33]

References in Popular Culture

•The band Akron/Family, on their eponymous debut album, include the following lyrics on the song "Suchness":

I want to see the thing in itself I don't want to think no more

(repeat x4)

four legs on the chair three flowers in the vase four legs on the chair three flowers in the vasetwo seconds untilone suchness ten thousand things I'll sleep and wake anew I'll sleep and wake ew

•Vladamir Nabokov uses the word noumenon in chapter 9 of

Bend Sinister

:"He had never indulged in the search for the True Substance, the One, the Absolute, the Diamondsuspended from the Christmas Tree of the Cosmos. He had always felt the faint ridicule of a finite mindpeering at the iridescence of the invisible through the prison bars of integers. And even if the Thingcould be caught, why should he, or anybody else for that matter, wish the phenomenon to lose its curls,its mask, its mirror, and become the bald noumenon?"

Noumena349

Notes

[1]"1. intellectual conception of a thing as it is in itself, not as it is known through perception" "2.The of itself unknown and unknowable rationalobject, or thing in itself, which is distinguished from the phenomenon through which it is apprehended by the senses, and by which it isinterpreted and understood; -- so used in the philosophy of Kant and his followers." (http://www.

websters-dictionary-online.

org/definitions/ Noumenon?cx=partner-pub-0939450753529744:v0qd01-tdlq&cof=FORID:9&ie=UTF-8&q=Noumenon&sa=Search#922)[2]"Platonist frames of thought draw a dividing line between two realms. One realm, the inferior of the two, is the material, physical world of sense experience. It is the "phenomenal" world, the world of objects, of the body, of immediate perception. The other, superior realm is theworld of the immaterial, the spiritual, the world of realities not accessible to the body's senses, the world known by intellect or spiritual sense,the "noumenal" world." (http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~dmycoff/plato.html)[3]Honderich, E. (Ed).

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy

[4]Hanna, Robert (2009). Completing the Picture of Kant's Metaphysics of Judgment (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/kant-judgment/ supplement2.

html). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.[5]

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(Macmillan, 1967, 1996) Volume 4, "Kant, Immanuel", section on "Critique of Pure Reason: Theme andPreliminaries", p308

ff

.[6]See, e.g.,

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(Macmillan, 1967, 1996) Volume 4, "Kant, Immanuel", section on "Critique of Pure Reason:Theme and Preliminaries", p308

ff

.[7]See also, e.g.,

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(Macmillan, 1967, 1996) Volume 4, "Kant, Immanuel", section on "Pure Concepts of theUnderstanding", p311

ff

.[8]Critique of Pure Reason A256/B312,P27[9]Immanuel Kant (1781)

Critique of Pure Reason,

for example in A254/B310,P362 (Guyer and Wood), "The concept of a

noumenon

, i.e., of athing that is not to be thought of as an object of the senses but rather as a thing in itself [...]"; But note that the terms are not usedinterchangeably throughout. The first reference to

thing-in-itself

comes many pages (A30) before the first to

noumenon

(A250). For asecondary or tertiary source, see: "Noumenon" (http://www.

britannica.

com/eb/article-9056357/noumenon) in

Encyclopædia Britannica

[10]"Noumenon: the name given to a thing when it is viewed as a transcendent object. The term 'negative noumenon' refers only to therecognition of something which is not an object of sensible intuition, while 'positive noumenon' refers to the (quite mistaken) attempt to knowsuch a thing as an empirical object. These two terms are sometimes used loosely as synonyms for 'transcendental object' and 'thing in itself',respectively. (Cf. phenomenon.)" - Glossary of Kant's Technical Terms (http://www.

hkbu.

edu.

hk/~ppp/ksp1/KSPglos.

html)[11]Thing in itself: an object considered transcendentally apart from all the conditions under which a subject can gain knowledge of it. Hence thething in itself is, by definition, unknowable. Sometimes used loosely as a synonym of noumenon. (Cf. appearance.)" - Glossary of Kant'sTechnical Terms (http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/ksp1/KSPglos.html). Palmquist defends his definitions of these terms in his article, "SixPerspectives on the Object in Kant's Theory of Knowledge",

Dialectica

40:2 (1986), pp.121-151; revised and reprinted as Chapter VI inPalmquist's book,

Kant's System of Perspectives

(Lanham: University Press of America, 1993).[12]Oizerman, T. I., "Kant's Doctrine of the "Things in Themselves" and Noumena", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 41, No.3, Mar., 1981, 333-350.[13]"Other interpreters have introducedan almost unending stream of varying suggestions as to how these terms ought to be used. A handful of examples will be sufficient to make this point clear, without any claim to represent an exhaustiveoverview.Perhaps the most commonly accepted view is expressed by Paulsen, who equates 'thing in itself' and 'noumenon', equates 'appearance' and 'phenomenon', distinguishes 'positive noumenon' and 'negative noumenon',and treats 'negative noumenon' as equivalent to 'transcendental object' [P4:148-50,154-5,192].Al-Azm and Wolff also seem satisfied to equate 'phenomenon' and 'appearance', though they both carefully distinguish 'thing in itself' from'negative noumenon' and 'positive noumenon' [A4:520; W21:165, 313-5; s.a. W9:162]. Gotterbarn similarly equates the former pair, as wellas 'thing in itself' and 'positive noumenon', but distinguishes between 'transcendental object', 'negative noumenon' and 'thing in itself' [G11: 201]. By contrast, Bird andGeorge both distinguishbetween 'appearance' and 'phenomenon', but not between 'thing in itself' and 'noumenon'[B20:18,19, 53-7; G7:513-4n]; and Bird sometimes blurs the distinction between 'thing in itself' and 'transcendental object' as well.[2] Gramequates 'thing in itself' not with 'noumenon', but with 'phenomenon' [G13:1,5-6]! Allison cites different official meanings for each term, yet hetends to equate 'thing in itself' at times with 'negative noumenon' and at times with 'transcendental object', usually ignoring the role of the'positive noumenon' [A7:94; A10:58,69]. And Buchdahl responds to the fact that the thing in itself seems to be connected with each of theother object-terms by regarding it as 'Kant's umbrella term'.[3]" Stephen Palmquist on Kan't object terms (http://www.

hkbu.

edu.

hk/~ppp/ ksp1/KSP6A.

html)[14]

Critique of Pure Reason

Bxxvi-xxvii.[15]

Critique of Pure Reason

A256,B312,p273(NKS)[16]"The Radical Unknowability of Kant's 'Thing in Itself'", Cogito 3:2 (March 1985), pp.101-115; revised and reprinted as Appendix V inStephen Palmquist, Kant's System of Perspectives (http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/ksp1) (Lanham: University Press of America, 1993).[17]Mattey, G.J (http://philosophy.

ucdavis.edu/mattey/phi175/phenomlec.

html)[18]

Critique of Pure Reason

A250/B307,P267(NKS)[19]

Critique of Pure Reason

A250/B30,P2677(NKS)[20]"The noumena are

‘

forms

’

or

‘

ideas

’

, which exist in a realm beyond space and time." University of Leeds course notes (http://www.philosophy.

leeds.

ac.

uk/GMR/hmp/modules/ihmp0304/units/unit05/dcreason.html)[21]

Critique of Pure Reason

B309,P270(NKS)

Noumena350

[22]Allison, H. -

Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, and Transcendental Idealism

- MS Word (http://staffweb.

ncnu.

edu.

tw/wenzel/ Tr Realism, Emprical Realism, and Tr Idealism.

DOC)[23]

Critique of Pure Reason

A253/B310[24]

Critique of Pure Reason

A256/B312,P273[25]

Critique of Pure Reason

B/137,P156[26]

Critique of Pure Reason

B/xx.,P24[27]Rohmann, Chris. "Kant"

A World of Ideas: A Dictionary of Important Theories, Concepts, Beliefs, and Thnkers.

Ballantine Books, 1999.[28]Mattey, GJ.

Lecture Notes on the Critique of Pure Reason

(http://www-philosophy.

ucdavis.

edu/mattey/kant/TIILEC.

HTM)[29]

The World as Will and Representation

(vol. 1, Dover edition 1966, ISBN 0-486-21761-2 p. 476-477)[30]Nietzsche, F.

Beyond Good and Evil

, Chapter 1. section 11. (http://www.

gutenberg.

org/dirs/etext03/bygdv10.

txt)[31]Nietzsche, F.

Beyond Good and Evil

Chapter 1. Section 12. (http://www.gutenberg.

org/dirs/etext03/bygdv10.

txt)[32]Popper, K.

Science: Conjectures and Refutations

(http://cla.calpoly.edu/~fotoole/321.

1/popper.

html)[33]Nietzsche, F.

Beyond Good and Evil

. Chapter 1, Section 18. (http://www.

gutenberg.

org/dirs/etext03/bygdv10.

txt)

External links

•Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Kant's metaphysics (http://www.

science.uva.

nl/~seop/entries/ kant-metaphysics/).•Glossary of Kant's technical terms (http://www.

hkbu.

edu.hk/~ppp/ksp1/KSPglos.html) by StephenPalmquist•Article from undergraduate journal

Noesis

(http://www.

chass.

utoronto.

ca/pcu/noesis/issue_v/noesis_v_2.html)•Lecture notes by G.J Mattey (http://www-philosophy.

ucdavis.

edu/mattey/kant/APPEAR.HTM)•Kant's System of Perspectives (http://www.

hkbu.edu.

hk/~ppp/ksp1) (Lanham: University Press of America,1993) by Stephen Palmquist

Ontological pluralism

Pluralism

is a term used in philosophy, meaning "doctrine of multiplicity", often used in opposition to

monism

("doctrine of unity") and

dualism

("doctrine of duality"). The term has different connotations in metaphysics andepistemology. Pluralism in metaphysics is a doctrine that many basic substances make up reality, while monismholds existence to be a single substance, often either matter (materialism) or mind (idealism), and dualism believestwo substances, such as matter and mind, to be necessary. Pluralism in epistemology is the position where there isnot one consistent set of truths about the world, but rather many. Often this is associated with pragmatism andconceptual and cultural relativism.

Metaphysics

The concept of pluralism in philosophy indicates the belief that reality consists of many different substances.

[1]

It sitsin contrast with the concepts of monism and dualism in metaphysics.

Ontological pluralism

Ontological pluralism is directly related with the belief in classical elements, and exists in many ancient world views.The concept of elements in the Western tradition originates from Babylonian mythology. The

Enûma Eliš

, a textwritten between the 18th and 16th centuries BC, describes four cosmic elements: the sea, earth, sky, and wind.

[2]

InEgypt, these elements were fire, water, air, and earth, and in Greece, Empedocles wrote that they were fire, air, waterand earth.

[3]

He called such four elements of physical reality "roots". Actually, Empedocles did not use the word"element" (

στοιχεῖον

=

stoicheion

), which seems to appear afterwards in Plato,

[4]

with different proportions or theroot elements indestructible and unchangeable elementary things was born the numerous types of bodies in theworld. Empedocles, said that association and disassociation of the elements was creating the reality. Aristotle

Ontological pluralism351incorporated theseelements,but his substance pluralism was not material in essence. His hylomorphic theory allowed him to maintain a reduced set of basic material elements as per the Milesians, while answering for theever-changing flux of Heraclitus and the unchanging unity of Parmenides. In his Physics, due to the continuum of Zeno's paradoxes, as well as both logical and empirical considerations for natural science, he presented numerousarguments against the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus, who posited a basic duality of

void

and

atoms

. Theatoms were an infinite variety of

irreducibles

, of all shapes and sizes, which randomly collide and mechanicallyhook together in the void, thus providing a reductive account of changeable

figure, order and position

as aggregatesof the unchangeable atoms.

[5]

Epistemology

Pluralistic conceptual relativism asserts that since there is no right way to carve up the world into concepts (e.g. whatcounts as an element), there will be several mutually exclusive complete and true descriptions of the world. In thecase of culturalrelativism,the argument claims that since truth is relative to culture, there will be several descriptions of parts of theworld, possibly complete and true on their own sub domains but conflicting whenextended to overlap. In the case of pragmatism, the argument claims that since truth is connected to successfulaction, and success is connected to the goals set by our interests, the correct set of truths will be relative to ourinterests. Hilary Putnam (a harsh critic of cultural relativism) is fond of the example, "how many objects are there inthe world?" Putnam argues that what counts as an object cannot be determined objectively but rather only relative tosomeone's interests, therefore the true number of objects in the world will change relative to whose interests we havein sight.In epistemology (how we conceive the structure of "truth"),

pluralism

is the opposite extreme to pragmatism.Pluralism employs conceptual relativism, while pragmatism employs the radical empiricism's radical translation of the world by wayof radical interpretation. Pluralism handles new information by structuring it relationally to other information, whilepragmatism handles it by assigning existential meaning to a personal immediacy. Pluralism ismetaphysical and meta-ethical, and espouses a cultural relativism with strong social constructivism, whilePragmatism is physical, ethical in their opinion and of weak social constructivism. In epistemology

Pluralism

isrelativistic in the way it deals with concepts. For example, taking the concept of

human culture

, pluralism takes theway of cultural relativism. Here it considers how local natural geography and local history gave rise to culturaltruths. Then it considers the set of cultural descriptions of each part of the world, and how they possibly containmutually exclusive truths. Each can be complete and true in their own yet cause falsities when extended to overlap.Robert Sapolsky reports, after decades of scientific field work, that his chimps had "27 different variants of regionalbehavioral differences", unique cultures based largely on tool making. Franz Boas performed his anthropology in asimilar same way, empirically, while developing his theory of cultural relativism.

Notes

[1]A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names (http://www.

philosophypages.com/dy/p5.

htm)[2]Francesca Rochberg (December 2002). "A consideration of Babylonian astronomy within the historiography of science".

Studies in Historyand Philosophy of Science

33

(4): 661

–

684. doi:10.1016/S0039-3681(02)00022-5.[3]Diels

–

Kranz,, Simplicius

Physics

, frag. B-17[4]Plato,

Timaeus

, 48 b - c[5]Aristotle,

Metaphysics

, I , 4, 985

References

•Philosophyweb.com, A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names (http://www.

philosophypages.

com/dy/ index.

htm). Accessed 13 February 2007.

Percept352

Percept

The Necker cube and Rubin vase can be perceived in more than oneway.

Perception

(from the Latin

perceptio, percipio

) isthe process of attaining awareness or understandingof the environment by organizing and interpretingsensory information.

[1]

[2]

All perception involvessignals in the nervous system, which in turn resultfrom physical stimulation of the sense organs.

[3]

Forexample, vision involves light striking the retinas of the eyes, smell is mediated by odor molecules andhearing involves pressure waves. Perception is notthe passive receipt of these signals, but can be shapedby learning, memory and expectation.

[4]

[5]

Perception involves these "top-down" effects as well as the "bottom-up"process of processing sensory input.

[5]

Perception depends on complex functions of the nervous system, butsubjectively seems mostly effortless because this processing happens outside conscious awareness.

[3]

Since the rise of experimental psychology in the late 19th Century, psychology's understanding of perception hasprogressed by combining a variety of techniques.

[4]

Psychophysics measures the effect on perception of varying thephysical qualities of the input. Sensory neuroscience studies the brain mechanisms underlying perception. Perceptualsystems can also be studied computationally, in terms of the information they process. Perceptual issues inphilosophy include the extent to which sensory qualities such as sounds, smells or colors exist in objective realityrather than the mind of the perceiver.

[4]

Although the senses were traditionally viewed as passive receptors, the study of illusions and ambiguous images hasdemonstrated that the brain's perceptual systems actively and pre-consciously attempt to make sense of their input.

[4]

There is still active debate about the extent to which perception is an active process of hypothesis testing, analogousto science, or whether realistic sensory information is rich enough to make this process unnecessary.

[4]

The perceptual systems of the brain enable individuals to see the world around them as stable, even though thesensory information may be incomplete and rapidly varying. Human and animal brains are structured in a modularway, with different areas processing different kinds of sensory information. Some of these modules take the form of sensory maps, mapping some aspect of the world across part of the brain's surface. These different modules areinterconnected and influence each other. For instance, the taste is strongly influenced by its odor.

[6]

Process and terminology

The process of perception begins with an object in the real world, termed the

distal stimulus

or

distal object

.

[3]

Bymeans of light, sound or another physical process, the object stimulates the body's sensory organs. These sensoryorgans transform the input energy into neural activity

—

a process called

transduction

.

[1]

[3]

This raw pattern of neuralactivity is called the

proximal stimulus

.

[3]

These neural signals are transmitted to the brain and processed.

[3]

Theresulting mental recreation of the distal stimulus is the

percept

. Perception is sometimes described as the process of constructing mental representations of distal stimuli using the information available in proximal stimuli.An example would be a person looking at a shoe. The shoe itself is the distal stimulus. When light from the shoeenters a person's eye and stimulates their retina, that stimulation is the proximal stimulus.

[7]

The image of the shoereconstructed by the brain of the person is the percept. Another example would be a telephone ringing. The ringingof the telephone is the distal stimulus. The sound stimulating a person's auditory receptors is the proximal stimulus,and the brain's interpretation of this as the ringing of a telephone is the percept. The different kinds of sensation suchas warmth, sound, and taste are called "sensory modalities".

[1]

[8]

Percept353Psychologist Jerome Bruner has developed a model of perception. According to him people go through the followingprocess to form opinions:

[9]

.1.When a perceiver encounters an unfamiliar target we are opened different informational cues and want to learnmore about the target.2.In the second step we try to collect more information about the target. Gradually, we encounter some familiarcues which helps us categorize the target.3.At this stage the cues become less open and selective. We try to search for more cues that confirm thecategorization of the target. At this stage we also actively ignore and even distort cues that violate our initialperceptions. Our perception becomes more selective and we finally paint a consistent picture of the target.According to Alan Saks and Gary Johns, there are three components to Perception

[10]

.1.The Perceiver, the person who becomes aware about something and comes to a final understanding. There are 3factors that can influence his or her perceptions: experience, motivational state and finally emotional state. Indifferent motivational or emotional states, the perceiver will react to or perceive something in different ways.Also in different situations he or she might employ a "perceptual defence" where they tend to "see what they wantto see".2.The Target. This is the person who is being perceived or judged. "Ambiguity or lack of information about a targetleads to a greater need for interpretation and addition."3.The Situation also greatly influences perceptions because different situations may call for additional informationabout the target.Stimuli are not necessarily translated into a percept and rarely does a single stimulus translate into a percept. Anambiguous stimulus may be translated into multiple percepts, experienced randomly, one at a time, in what is called"multistable perception". And the same stimuli, or absence of them, may result in different percepts depending onsubject

’

s culture and previous experiences. Ambiguous figures demonstrate that a single stimulus can result in morethan one percept; for example the Rubin vase which can be interpreted either as a vase or as two faces. The perceptcan bind sensations from multiple senses into a whole. A picture of a talking person on a television screen, forexample, is bound to the sound of speech from speakers to form a percept of a talking person. "Percept" is also aterm used by Leibniz,

[11]

Bergson, Deleuze and Guattari

[12]

to define perception independent from perceivers.

Perception and reality

In the case of visual perception, some people can actually see the percept shift in their mind's eye.

[13]

Others, whoare not picture thinkers, may not necessarily perceive the 'shape-shifting' as their world changes. The 'esemplastic'nature has been shown by experiment: an ambiguous image has multiple interpretations on the perceptual level.This confusing ambiguity of perception is exploited in human technologies such as camouflage, and also inbiological mimicry, for example by European Peacock butterflies, whose wings bear eye markings that birds respondto as though they were the eyes of a dangerous predator.There is also evidence that the brain in some ways operates on a slight "delay", to allow nerve impulses from distantparts of the body to be integrated into simultaneous signals.

[14]

Perception is one of the oldest fields in psychology. The oldest quantitative law in psychology is the Weber-Fechnerlaw, which quantifies the relationship between the intensity of physical stimuli and their perceptual effects (forexample, testing how much darker a computer screen can get before the viewer actually notices). The study of perception gave rise to the Gestalt school of psychology, with its emphasis on holistic approach.

Percept354

Features

Constancy

Perceptual constancy

is the ability of perceptual systems to recognise the same object from widely varying sensoryinputs.

[5]

[15]

For example, individual people can be recognised from views, such as frontal and profile, which formvery different shapes on the retina. A coin looked at face-on makes a circular image on the retina, but when held atangle it makes an elliptical image.

[16]

In normal perception these are recognised as a single three-dimensional object.Without this correction process, an animal approaching from the distance would appear to gain in size.

[17]

[18]

Onekind of perceptual constancy is

color constancy

: for example, a white piece of paper can be recognised as such underdifferent colors and intensities of light.

[18]

Another example is

roughness constancy

: when a hand is drawn quicklyacross a surface, the touch nerves are stimulated more intensely. The brain compensates for this, so the speed of contact does not affect the perceived roughness.

[18]

Other constancies include melody, odor, brightness andwords.

[19]

These constancies are not always total, but the variation in the percept is much less than the variation inthe physical stimulus.

[18]

The perceptual systems of the brain achieve perceptual constancy in a variety of ways, eachspecialized for the kind of information being processed.

[20]

Grouping

Law of Closure

The

principles of grouping

(or

Gestalt laws of grouping

) are a set of principles in psychology, first proposed by Gestalt psychologists toexplain how humans naturally perceive objects as organized patternsand objects. Gestalt psychologists argued that these principles existbecause the mind has an innate disposition to perceive patterns in thestimulus based on certain rules. These principles are organized intofive categories. The principle of

proximity

states that, all else beingequal, perception tends to group stimuli that are close together as partof the same object, and stimuli that are far apart as two separateobjects. The principle of

similarity

states that, all else being equal, perception lends itself to seeing stimuli thatphysically resemble each other as part of the same object, and stimuli that are different as part of a different object.This allows for people to distinguish between adjacent and overlapping objects based on their visual texture andresemblance. The principle of

closure

refers to the mind

’

s tendency to see complete figures or forms even if a pictureis incomplete, partially hidden by other objects, or if part of the information needed to make a complete picture inour minds is missing. For example, if part of a shape

’

s border is missing people still tend to see the shape ascompletely enclosed by the border and ignore the gaps. The principle of

good continuation

makes sense of stimulithat overlap: when there is an intersection between two or more objects, people tend to perceive each as a singleuninterrupted object. The principle of

common fate

groups stimuli together on the basis of their movement. Whenvisual elements are seen moving in the same direction at the same rate, perception associates the movement as partof the same stimulus. This allows people to make out moving objects even when other details, such as color oroutline, are obscured. The principle of

good form

refers to the tendency to group together forms of similar shape,pattern, color, etc.

[21]

[22]

[23]

[24]

Later research has identified additional grouping principles.

[25]

Percept355

Contrast effects

Two physically identical orange squares areperceived as different subjective colors, becauseeach has a different surrounding color.[26]

A common finding across many different kinds of perception is that theperceived qualities of an object can be affected by the qualities of context. If one object is extreme on some dimension, then neighboringobjects are perceived as further away from that extreme. "Simultaneouscontrast effect" is the term used when stimuli are presented at the sametime, whereas "successive contrast" applies when stimuli are presentedone after another.

[27]

The contrast effect was noted by the 17th Century philosopher JohnLocke, who observed that lukewarm water can feel hot or cold,depending on whether the hand touching it was previously in hot orcold water.

[28]

In the early 20th Century, Wilhelm Wundt identifiedcontrast as a fundamental principle of perception, and since then the effect has been confirmed in many differentareas.

[28]

These effects shape not only visual qualities like color and brightness, but other kinds of perception,including how heavy an object feels.

[29]

One experiment found that thinking of the name "Hitler" led to subjectsrating a person as more hostile.

[30]

Whether a piece of music is perceived as good or bad can depend on whether themusic heard before it was unpleasant or pleasant.

[31]

For the effect to work, the objects being compared need to besimilar to each other: a television reporter can seem smaller when interviewing a tall basketball player, but not whenstanding next to a tall building.

[29]

Effect of experience

With experience, organisms can learn to make finer perceptual distinctions, and learn new kinds of categorization.Wine-tasting, the reading of X-ray images and music appreciation are applications of this process in the humansphere. Research has focused on the relation of this to other kinds of learning, and whether it takes place inperipheral sensory systems or in the brain's processing of sense information.

Effect of motivation and expectation

Percept356

Robert Fludd's depiction of perception (1619).

A

perceptual set

, also called

perceptual expectancy

or just

set

is apredisposition to perceive things in a certain way.

[32]

It is an exampleof how perception can be shaped by "top-down" processes such asdrives and expectations.

[33]

Perceptual sets occur in all the differentsenses.

[17]

They can be long term, such as a special sensitivity tohearing one's own name in a crowded room, or short term, as in theease with which hungry people notice the smell of food.

[34]

A simpledemonstration of the effect involved very brief presentations of non-words such as "sael". Subjects who were told to expect wordsabout animals read it as "seal", but others who were expectingboat-related words read it as "sail".

[34]

Sets can be created by motivation and so can result in peopleinterpreting ambiguous figures so that they see what they want tosee.

[33]

For instance, how someone perceives what unfolds during asports game can be biased if they strongly support one of the teams.

[35]

In one experiment, students were allocated to pleasant or unpleasanttasks by a computer. They were told that either a number or a letterwould flash on the screen to say whether they were going to taste anorange juice drink or an unpleasant-tasting health drink. In fact, an ambiguous figure was flashed on screen, whichcould either be read as the letter B or the number 13. When the letters were associated with the pleasant task,subjects were more likely to perceive a letter B, and when letters were associated with the unpleasant task theytended to perceive a number 13.

[32]

Perceptual set has been demonstrated in many social contexts. People who are primed to think of someone as"warm" are more likely to perceive a variety of positive characteristics in them, than if the word "warm" is replacedby "cold". When someone has a reputation for being funny, an audience are more likely to find them amusing.

[34]

Individual's perceptual sets reflect their own personality traits. For example, people with an aggressive personalityare quicker to correctly identify aggressive words or situations.

[34]

One classic psychological experiment showed slower reaction times and less accurate answers when a deck of playing cards reversed the color of the suit symbol for some cards (e.g. red spades and black hearts).

[36]

Philosopher Andy Clark explains that perception, although it occursquickly, is not simply a bottom-up process (where minute details are put together to form larger wholes). Instead, our brains use what he calls

Predictive coding

.It starts with very broad constraints and expectations for the state of the world, and as expectations are met, it makesmore detailed predictions (errors lead to new predictions, or learning processes). Clark says this research has variousimplications; not only can there be no completely "unbiased, unfiltered" perception, but this means that there is agreat deal of feedback between perception and expectation (perceptual experiences often shape our beliefs, but thoseperceptions were based on existing beliefs).

[37]

Theories

Perception as hypothesis-testing

Cognitive theories of perception assume there is a poverty of stimulus. This (with reference to perception) is theclaim that sensations are, by themselves, unable to provide a unique description of the world. Sensations require'enriching', which is the role of the mental model. A different type of theory is the perceptual ecology approach of James J. Gibson. Gibson rejected the assumption of a poverty of stimulus by rejecting the notion that perception isbased in sensations

–

instead, he investigated what information is actually presented to the perceptual systems. His

Percept357theory "assumes the existence of stable, unbounded, and permanent stimulus-information in the ambient optic array.And it supposes that the visual system can explore and detect this information. The theory is information-based, notsensation-based."

[38]

He and the psychologists who work within this paradigm detailed how the world could bespecified to a mobile, exploring organism via the lawful projection of information about the world into energyarrays. Specification is a 1:1 mapping of some aspect of the world into a perceptual array; given such a mapping, noenrichment is required and perception is direct perception.

Perception-in-action

An ecological understanding of perception derived from Gibson's early work is that of "perception-in-action", thenotion that perception is a requisite property of animate action; that without perception action would be unguided,and without action perception would serve no purpose. Animate actions require both perception and motion, andperception and movement can be described as "two sides of the same coin, the coin is action". Gibson works fromthe assumption that singular entities, which he calls "invariants", already exist in the real world and that all that theperception process does is to home in upon them. A view known as constructivism (held by such philosophers asErnst von Glasersfeld) regards the continual adjustment of perception and action to the external input as preciselywhat constitutes the "entity", which is therefore far from being invariant.

[39]

Glasersfeld considers an "invariant" as a target to be homed in upon, and a pragmatic necessity to allow an initialmeasure of understanding to be established prior to the updating that a statement aims to achieve. The invariant doesnot and need not represent an actuality, and Glasersfeld describes it as extremely unlikely that what is desired orfeared by an organism will never suffer change as time goes on. This social constructionist theory thus allows for aneedful evolutionary adjustment.

[40]

A mathematical theory of perception-in-action has been devised and investigated in many forms of controlledmovement, and has been described in many different species of organism using the General Tau Theory. Accordingto this theory, tau information, or time-to-goal information is the fundamental 'percept' in perception.

Evolutionary psychology and perception

Many experts, such as Jerry Fodor, write that the purpose of perception is knowledge, but evolutionary psychologistshold that its primary purpose is to guide action.

[41]

For example, they say, depth perception seems to have evolvednot to help us know the distances to other objects but rather to help us move around in space.

[41]

Evolutionarypsychologists say that animals from fiddler crabs to humans use eyesight for collision avoidance, suggesting thatvision is basically for directing action, not providing knowledge.

[41]

Building and maintaining sense organs is metabolically expensive, so these organs evolve only when they improvean organism's fitness.

[41]

More than half the brain is devoted to processing sensory information, and the brain itself consumes roughly one-fourth of one's metabolic resources, so the senses must provide exceptional benefits tofitness.

[41]

Perception accurately mirrors the world; animals get useful, accurate information through their senses.

[41]

Scientists who study perception and sensation have long understood the human senses as adaptations.

[41]

Depthperception consists of processing over half a dozen visual cues, each of which is based on a regularity of the physicalworld.

[41]

Vision evolved to respond to the narrow range of electromagnetic energy that is plentiful and that does notpass through objects.

[41]

Sound waves provide useful information about the sources of and distances to objects, withlarger animals making and hearing lower-frequency sounds and smaller animals making and hearinghigher-frequency sounds.

[41]

Taste and smell respond to chemicals in the environment that were significant forfitness in the EEA.

[41]

The sense of touch is actually many senses, including pressure, heat, cold, tickle, and pain.

[41]

Pain, while unpleasant, is adaptive.

[41]

An important adaptation for senses is range shifting, by which the organismbecomes temporarily more or less sensitive to sensation.

[41]

For example, one's eyes automatically adjust to dim orbright ambient light.

[41]

Sensory abilities of different organisms often coevolve, as is the case with the hearing of echolocating bats and that of the moths that have evolved to respond to the sounds that the bats make.

[41]

Percept358Evolutionary psychologists claim that perception demonstrates the principle of modularity, with specializedmechanisms handling particular perception tasks.

[41]

For example, people with damage to a particular part of thebrain suffer from the specific defect of not being able to recognize faces (prospagnosia).

[41]

EP suggests that thisindicates a so-called face-reading module.

[41]

Theories of visual perception

•Empirical theories of perception•Anne Treisman's Feature Integration Theory•Interactive Activation and Competition•Irving Biederman's Recognition by Components Theory

Physiology

A

sensory system

is a part of the nervous system responsible for processing sensory information. A sensory systemconsists of sensory receptors, neural pathways, and parts of the brain involved in sensory perception. Commonlyrecognized sensory systems are those for vision, hearing, somatic sensation (touch), taste and olfaction (smell). It hasbeen suggested that the immune system is an overlooked sensory modlality.

[42]

In short, senses are transducers fromthe physical world to the realm of the mind.The receptive field is the specific part of the world to which a receptor organ and receptor cells respond. Forinstance, the part of the world an eye can see, is its receptive field; the light that each rod or cone can see, is itsreceptive field.

[43]

Receptive fields have been identified for the visual system, auditory system and somatosensorysystem, so far.

Types

Of sound

Anatomy of the human ear. (The length of theauditory canal is exaggerated in this image)

Hearing (or

audition

) is the ability to perceive sound by detectingvibrations. Frequencies capable of being heard by humans are calledaudio or

sonic

. The range is typically considered to be between 20 Hzand 20,000 Hz.

[44]

Frequencies higher than audio are referred to asultrasonic, while frequencies below audio are referred to as infrasonic.The auditory system includes the ears and inner structures whichproduce neural signals in response to the sound. The primary auditorycortex, within the temporal lobe of the human brain, is where auditoryinformation arrives in the cerebral cortex.Sound does not usually come from a single source: in real situations,sounds from multiple sources and directions are superimposed as theyarrive at the ears. Hearing involves the computationally complex task of separating out the sources of interest, oftenestimating their distance and direction as well as identifying them.

[16]

Percept359

Of speech

Though the phrase "I owe you" can be heard as three distinct words, a spectrogramreveals no clear boundaries.

Speech perception

is the process by whichthe sounds of language are heard,interpreted and understood. Research inspeech perception seeks to understand howhuman listeners recognize speech soundsand use this information to understandspoken language. The sound of a word canvary widely according to words around itand the tempo of the speech, as well as thephysical characteristics, accent and mood of the speaker. Listeners manage to perceivewords across this wide range of differentconditions. Another variation is thatreverberation can make a large difference in sound between a word spoken from the far side of a room and the sameword spoken up close. Experiments have shown that people automatically compensate for this effect when hearingspeech.

[16]

[45]

The process of perceiving speech begins atthe level of the sound signal and the process of audition. After processingthe initial auditory signal, speech sounds are further processed to extract acoustic cues and phonetic information. This speech information can then be used for higher-level language processes, such as word recognition. Speechperception is not necessarily uni-directional. That is, higher-level language processes connected with morphology,syntax, or semantics may interact with basic speech perception processes to aid in recognition of speech sounds. Itmay be the case that it is not necessary and maybe even not possible for a listener to recognize phonemes beforerecognizing higher units, like words for example. In one experiment, Richard M. Warren replaced one phoneme of aword with a cough-like sound. His subjects restored the missing speech sound perceptually without any difficultyand what is more, they were not able to identify accurately which phoneme had been disturbed.

[46]

Touch

Haptic perception

is the process of recognizing objects through touch. It involves a combination of somatosensoryperception of patterns on the skin surface (e.g., edges, curvature, and texture) and proprioception of hand positionand conformation. People can rapidly and accurately identify three-dimensional objects by touch.

[47]

This involvesexploratory procedures, such as moving the fingers over the outer surface of the object or holding the entire object inthe hand.

[48]

Haptic perception relies on the forces experienced during touch.

[49]

Gibson defined the haptic system as "The sensibility of the individual to the world adjacent to his body by use of hisbody".

[50]

Gibson and others emphasized the close link between haptic perception and body movement: hapticperception is active exploration. The concept of haptic perception is related to the concept of extended physiologicalproprioception according to which, when using a tool such as a stick, perceptual experience is transparentlytransferred to the end of the tool.

Taste

Taste (or, the more formal term,

gustation

) isthe ability to perceive the flavor of substances including, but notlimited to, food. Humans receive tastes through sensory organs called

taste buds

, or

gustatory calyculi

, concentratedon the upper surface of the tongue.

[51]

The human tongue has 100 to 150 taste receptor cells on each of its roughlyten thousand taste buds.

[52]

There are five primary tastes: sweetness, bitterness, sourness, saltiness, and umami.Other tastes can be mimicked by combining these basic tastes.

[52]

[53]

The recognition and awareness of umami is arelatively recent development in Western cuisine.

[54]

The basic tastes contribute only partially to the sensation and

Percept360flavor of food in the mouth

—

other factors include smell, detected by the olfactory epithelium of the nose;

[6]

texture, detected through a variety of mechanoreceptors, muscle nerves, etc.;

[53]

[55]

and temperature, detected bythermoreceptors.

[53]

All basic tastes are classified as either

appetitive

or

aversive

, depending upon whether the thingsthey sense are harmful or beneficial.

[56]

Of the social world

Social perception

is the part of perception that allows people to understand the individuals and groups of their socialworld, and thus an element of social cognition.

[57]

Notes

[1]Pomerantz, James R. (2003): "Perception: Overview". In: Lynn Nadel (Ed.),

Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science

, Vol. 3, London: NaturePublishing Group, pp. 527

–

537[2]Defined as "receiving, collecting, action of taking possession, apprehension with the mind or senses." in Oxford English Dictionary: Thedefinitive record of the English language (http://www.

OED.com)[3]Goldstein (2009) pp. 5

–

7[4]Gregory, Richard. "Perception" in Gregory, Zangwill (1987) pp. 598

–

601[5]Bernstein, Douglas A. (5 March 2010).

Essentials of Psychology

(http://books.google.

com/books?id=rd77N0KsLVkC&pg=PA123).Cengage Learning. pp. 123

–

124. ISBN 9780495906933. . Retrieved 25 March 2011.[6]DeVere, Ronald; Calvert, Marjorie (31 August 2010).

Navigating Smell and Taste Disorders

(http://books.

google.

com/ books?id=m6WOtX2QAtwC&pg=PA39). Demos Medical Publishing. pp. 33

–

37. ISBN 9781932603965. . Retrieved 26 March 2011.[7]http://www.

learner.

org/discoveringpsychology/07/e07glossary.html[8]Willis, William D.; Coggeshall, Richard E. (31 January 2004).

Sensory Mechanisms of the Spinal Cord: Primary afferent neurons and thespinal dorsal horn

(http://books.google.com/books?id=uqnKCewO2voC&pg=PA1). Springer. p. 1. ISBN 9780306480331. . Retrieved 25March 2011.[9]Alan S. & Gary J. (2011). Perception, Attribution, and Judgment of Others. Organizational Behaviour: Understanding and Managing Life atWork Vol. 7[10]Alan S. & Gary J. (2011). Perception, Attribution, and Judgment of Others. Organizational Behaviour: Understanding and Managing Life atWork Vol. 7[11]Leibniz'

Monadology

[12]Deleuze and Guattari's

What is Philosophy?

[13]Wettlaufer, Alexandra K. (2003).

In the mind's eye : the visual impulse in Diderot, Baudelaire and Ruskin, pg. 257

. Amsterdam: Rodopi.ISBN 9042010355[14]The Secret Advantage Of Being Short (http://www.

npr.

org/templates/story/story.

php?storyId=104183551) by Robert Krulwich.

AllThings Considered

, NPR. 18 May 2009.[15]Atkinson, Rita L.; Atkinson, Richard C.; Smith, Edward E. (March 1990).

Introduction to psychology

(http://books.

google.

com/ books?id=Nw54PwAACAAJ). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. pp. 177

–

183. ISBN 9780155436893. . Retrieved 24 March 2011.[16]Moore, Brian C. J. (15 October 2009). "Audition" (http://books.google.com/books?id=Y4TOEN4f5ZMC&pg=PA136). In Goldstein, E.Bruce.

Encyclopedia of Perception

. Sage. pp. 136

–

137. ISBN 9781412940818. . Retrieved 26 March 2011.[17]Sonderegger, Theo (16 October 1998).

Psychology

(http://books.google.com/books?id=UUrCHiSb_QsC&pg=PA45). John Wiley andSons. pp. 45

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46. ISBN 9780822053279. . Retrieved 24 March 2011.[18]Goldstein, E. Bruce (15 October 2009). "Constancy" (http://books.google.

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313. ISBN 9781412940818. . Retrieved 26 March 2011.[19]Roeckelein, Jon E. (2006).

Elsevier's dictionary of psychological theories

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Visual perception: essential readings

(http://books.google.

com/books?id=GpGvYSTk9gYC&pg=PA7).Psychology Press. p. 7. ISBN 9780863775987. . Retrieved 24 March 2011.[21]Gray, Peter O. (2006):

Psychology

, 5th ed., New York: Worth, p. 281. ISBN 978-0716706175[22]Wolfe, Jeremy M.; Kluender, Keith R.; Levi, Dennis M.; Bartoshuk, Linda M.; Herz, Rachel S.; Klatzky, Roberta L.; Lederman, Susan J.(2008). "Gestalt Grouping Principles" (http://www.sinauer.com./wolfe/chap4/gestaltF.

htm).

Sensation and Perception

(2nd ed.). SinauerAssociates. pp. 78, 80. ISBN 9780878939381. .[23]Goldstein (2009). pp. 105

–

107[24]Banerjee, J. C. (1994). "Gestalt Theory of Perception".

Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Psychological Terms

. M.D. Publications Pvt. Ltd.pp. 107

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108. ISBN 9788185880280.[25]Weiten, Wayne (1998).

Psychology: themes and variations

(4th ed.). Brooks/Cole Pub. Co.. p. 144. ISBN 9780534340148.[26]Dale Purves and R. Beau Lotto, 2003. Why we see what we do: an empirical theory of vision. Sinaeur Associates

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[27]Corsini, Raymond J. (2002).

The dictionary of psychology

(http://books.

google.

com/books?id=0uxnglHzYaoC&pg=PA219). PsychologyPress. p. 219. ISBN 9781583913284. . Retrieved 24 March 2011.[28]Kushner, Laura H. (2008).

Contrast in judgments of mental health

(http://books.

google.

com/books?id=TYn5VHp9jioC&pg=PA1).ProQuest. p. 1. ISBN 9780549913146. . Retrieved 24 March 2011.[29]Plous, Scott (1993).

The psychology of judgment and decision making

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google.

com/books?id=xvWOQgAACAAJ).McGraw-Hill. pp. 38

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41. ISBN 9780070504776. . Retrieved 24 March 2011.[30]Moskowitz, Gordon B. (2005).

Social cognition: understanding self and others

(http://books.

google.

com/books?id=_-NLW8Ynvp8C&pg=PA421). Guilford Press. p. 421. ISBN 9781593850852. . Retrieved 24 March 2011.[31]Popper, Arthur N. (30 November 2010).

Music Perception

(http://books.

google.

com/books?id=ZYXd3CF1_vkC&pg=PA150). Springer.p. 150. ISBN 9781441961136. . Retrieved 24 March 2011.[32]Weiten, Wayne (17 December 2008).

Psychology: Themes and Variations

(http://books.

google.

com/books?id=sILajOhJpOsC&pg=PT193). Cengage Learning. p. 193. ISBN 9780495601975. . Retrieved 24 March 2011.[33]Coon, Dennis; Mitterer, John O. (29 December 2008).

Introduction to Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior

(http://books.

google.com/books?id=vw20LEaJe10C&pg=PA171). Cengage Learning. pp. 171

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172. ISBN 9780495599111. . Retrieved 24 March 2011.[34]Hardy, Malcolm; Heyes, Steve (2 December 1999).

Beginning Psychology

(http://books.

google.

com/books?id=fjPWqXi9WQsC&pg=PA24). Oxford University Press. pp. 24

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27. ISBN 9780198328216. . Retrieved 24 March 2011.[35]Block, J. R.; Yuker, Harold E. (1 October 2002).

Can You Believe Your Eyes?: Over 250 Illusions and Other Visual Oddities

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com/books?id=uNMFiMQu8BMC&pg=PA173). Robson. pp. 173

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174. ISBN 9781861055866. . Retrieved 24 March 2011.[36]"On the Perception of Incongruity: A Paradigm" by Jerome S. Bruner and Leo Postman.

Journal of Personality

, 18, pp. 206-223. 1949.Yorku.ca (http://psychclassics.

yorku.ca/Bruner/Cards/)[37]http://www.

edge.

org/q2011/q11_6.

html[38]Gibson, James J. (2002): "A Theory of Direct Visual Perception". In: Alva Noë/Evan Thompson (Eds.),

Vision and Mind. Selected Readingsin the Philosophy of Perception

, Cambridge, MIT Press, pp. 77

–

89.[39]Consciousness in Action, S. L. Hurley, illustrated, Harvard University Press, 2002, 0674007964, pg. 430-432,[40]Glasersfeld, Ernst von (1995),

Radical Constructivism: A Way of Knowing and Learning,

London: RoutledgeFalmer; Poerksen, Bernhard(ed.) (2004),

The Certainty of Uncertainty: Dialogues Introducing Constructivism,

Exeter: Imprint Academic; Wright. Edmond (2005).

Narrative, Perception, Language, and Faith,

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.[41]Gaulin, Steven J. C. and Donald H. McBurney. Evolutionary Psychology. Prentice Hall. 2003. ISBN 13: 9780131115293, Chapter 4, p81-101.[42]Bedford,F.L. (2011). The missing sensory modality: the immune system. Perception, 40, 1265-1267(DOI:10.1068/p7119) http://www.perceptionweb.

com/abstract.

cgi?id=p7119[43]Kolb & Whishaw:

Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology

(2003)[44]"Frequency Range of Human Hearing" (http://hypertextbook.

com/facts/2003/ChrisDAmbrose.

shtml).

The Physics Factbook

. .[45]Watkins, Anthony J.; Raimond, Andrew; Makin, Simon J. (23 March 2010). "Room reflection and constancy in speech-like sounds:Within-band effects" (http://books.google.com/books?id=ACkNL-G7gUUC&pg=PA440). In Enrique A. Lopez-Poveda.

The Neurophysiological Bases of Auditory Perception

. Springer. p. 440. ISBN 9781441956859. . Retrieved 26 March 2011.[46]Warren, R.M. (1970). "Restoration of missing speech sounds".

Science

167

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393. doi:10.1126/science.167.3917.392.PMID 5409744.[47]Klatzky RL, Lederman SJ, & Metzger VA (1985). "Identifying objects by touch: An "expert system."".

Perception & Psychophysics

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302.[48]Lederman SJ, & Klatzky RL (1987). "Hand movements: A window into haptic object recognition".

Cognitive Psychology

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368.[49]Robles-de-la-torre, Gabriel; Hayward, Vincent (2001). "Force can overcome object geometry in the perception of shape through activetouch".

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412

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448. doi:10.1038/35086588. PMID 11473320.[50]Gibson, J.J. (1966).

The senses considered as perceptual systems.

. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0313239614.[51]Human biology (Page 201/464) (http://books.

google.com/books?id=dNhFLnc6NRkC&lpg=PA201) Daniel D. Chiras. Jones & BartlettLearning, 2005.[52]DeVere, Ronald; Calvert, Marjorie (31 August 2010).

Navigating Smell and Taste Disorders

(http://books.

google.

com/ books?id=m6WOtX2QAtwC&pg=PA39). Demos Medical Publishing. pp. 39

–

40. ISBN 9781932603965. . Retrieved 26 March 2011.[53]Siegel, George J.; Albers, R. Wayne (2006).

Basic neurochemistry: molecular, cellular, and medical aspects

(http://books.

google.

com/ books?id=Af0IyHtGCMUC&pg=PA825). Academic Press. p. 825. ISBN 9780120883974. . Retrieved 26 March 2011.•Oh, Mama, What's Up With Umami? (http://www.

foxnews.

com/leisure/2010/01/05/oh-mama-whats-umami/) foxnews.com, January05, 2010•Umami Dearest: The mysterious fifth taste has officially infiltrated the food scene (http://www.

trendcentral.

com/life/umami-dearest/)trendcentral.com, Feb 23rd, 2010•#8 Food Trend for 2010: I Want My Umami (http://www.foodchannel.com/articles/article/8-food-trend-for-2010-i-want-my-umami/)foodchannel.com, Dec. 06, 2009[55]Food texture: measurement and perception (page 3

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4/311) (http://books.

google.

com/books?id=aJBIbvClWfcC&lpg=PP1&dq=Foodtexture&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q&f=false) Andrew J. Rosenthal. Springer, 1999.

Personal identity363

Personal identity

In philosophy,

personal identity

refers to the unique identity of persons through time. That is to say, the conditionsunder which a person is said to be identical to himself or herself through time. Identity is an issue for bothcontinental philosophy and analytic philosophy. A key question in continental philosophy is in what sense we canmaintain the modern conception of identity, while realizing many of our prior assumptions about the world areincorrect.

Description

Personal identity over time

: What does it take forindividuals to persist from moment to moment

—

or in other words, for the same individual to existat different moments?

The question regarding personal identity has addressed the conditionsunder which a person at one time is the same person at another time,known as

personal continuity

. This sort of analysis of personal identityprovides a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the identity of the person over time. In the modern philosophy of mind, this conceptof personal identity is sometimes referred to as the

diachronic

problemof personal identity. The

synchronic

problem is grounded in thequestion of what features or traits characterize a given person at onetime.

The mind-body problem

The mind-body problem concerns the explanation of the relationship, if any, that exists between minds, or mental processes, and bodily statesor processes. One of the aims of philosophers who work in this area isto explain how a supposedly non-material mind can influence a material body and vice-versa.Our perceptual experiences depend on stimuli which arrive at our various sensory organs from the externalworldand these stimuli cause changes in our mental states; ultimately causing us to feel a sensation, which may bepleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Someone's desire for a slice of pizza, for example, will tend to cause that person tomove their body in a specific manner and in a specific direction to obtain said pizza. The question, then, is how it canbe possible for conscious experiences to arise out of a lump of grey matter endowed with nothing butelectrochemical properties. A related problem is to explain how someone's propositional attitudes (e.g. beliefs anddesires) can cause that individual's neurons to fire and his muscles to contract in exactly the correct manner. Thesecomprise some of the puzzles that have confronted epistemologists and philosophers of mind from at least the timeof René Descartes.

Consciousness basis

John Locke considered personal identity (or the self) to be founded on consciousness (viz. Memory), and not on thesubstance of either the soul or the body. Book II Chapter XXVII entitled "On Identity and Diversity" in

An EssayConcerning Human Understanding

(1689) has been said to be one of the first modern conceptualizations of consciousness as the repeated self-identification of oneself. Through this identification, moral responsibility could beattributed to the subject and punishment and guilt could be justified, as critics such as Nietzsche would point out.According to Locke, personal identity (the self) "depends on consciousness, not on substance" nor on the soul. Weare the same person to the extent that we are conscious of our past and future thoughts and actions in the same wayas we are conscious of our present thoughts and actions. If consciousness is this "thought" which "that goes alongwith the substance ... which makes the same person", then personal identity is only founded on the repeated act of

Personal identity364consciousness: "This may show us wherein personal identity consists: not in the identity of substance, but... in theidentity of consciousness". For example, one may claim to be a reincarnation of Plato, therefore having the same soulsubstance. However, one would be the same person as Plato only if one had the same consciousness of Plato'sthoughts and actions that he himself did. Therefore, self-identity is not based on the soul. One soul may have variouspersonalities.Neither is self-identity founded on the body substance, argues Locke, as the body may change while the personremains the same.Even the identity of animals is not founded on their body: "animal identity is preserved in identityof life, and not of substance", as the body of the animal grows and changes during its life. On the other hand, identityof humans is based on their consciousness. Take for example a prince's mind which enters the body of a cobbler: toall exterior eyes, the cobbler would remain a cobbler. But to the prince himself, the cobbler would be himself, as hewould be conscious of the prince's thoughts and acts, and not those of the cobbler. A prince's consciousness in acobbler's body: thus the cobbler is, in fact, a prince.But this interesting border-case leads to this problematic thought that since personal identity is based onconsciousness, and that only oneself can be aware of his consciousness, exterior human judges may never know if they really are judging - and punishing - the same person, or simply the same body. In other words, Locke arguesthat you may be judged only for the acts of your body, as this is what is apparent to all but God; however, you are intruth only responsible for the acts for which you are conscious. This forms the basis of the insanity defense: onecannot be held accountable for acts from which one was unconscious - and therefore leads to interestingphilosophical questions:"personal identity consists [not in the identity of substance] but in the identity of consciousness, wherein if Socrates and the present mayor of Queenborough agree, they are the same person: if the same Socrates wakingand sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking and sleeping is not the same person.And to punish Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never consciousof, would be no more right, than to punish one twin for what his brother-twin did, whereof he knew nothing,because their outsides were so like, that they could not be distinguished; for such twins have been seen."Or again:"PERSON, as I take it, is the name for this self. Wherever a man finds what he calls himself, there, I think,another may say is the same person. It is a forensic term, appropriating actions and their merit; and so belongonly to intelligent agents, capable of a law, and happiness, and misery. This personality extends itself beyondpresent existence to what is past, only by consciousness, --whereby it becomes concerned and accountable;owns and imputes to itself past actions, just upon the same ground and for the same reason as it does thepresent. All which is founded in a concern for happiness, the unavoidable concomitant of consciousness; thatwhich is conscious of pleasure and pain, desiring that that self that is conscious should be happy. Andtherefore whatever past actions it cannot reconcile or APPROPRIATE to that present self by consciousness, itcan be no more concerned in it than if they had never been done: and to receive pleasure or pain, i.e. reward orpunishment, on the account of any such action, is all one as to be made happy or miserable in its first being,without any demerit at all. For, supposing a MAN punished now for what he had done in another life, whereof he could bemade to haveno consciousness at all, what difference is there between that punishment and beingCREATED miserable? And therefore, conformable to this, the apostle tells us, that, at the great day, whenevery one shall 'receive according to his doings, the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open.' The sentence shallbe justified by the consciousness all person shall have, that THEY THEMSELVES, in what bodies soever theyappear, or what substances soever that consciousness adheres to, are the SAME that committed those actions,and deserve that punishment for them."Henceforth, Locke's conception of personal identity founds it not on the substance or the body, but in the "samecontinued consciousness", which is also distinct from the soul since the soul may have no consciousness of itself (asin reincarnation). He creates a third term between the soul and the body - and Locke's thought may certainly be

Personal identity365meditated by those who, following a scientist ideology, would identify too quickly the brain to consciousness. Forthe brain, as the body and as any substance, may change, while consciousness remains the same. Therefore personalidentity is not in the brain, but in consciousness. However, Locke's theory also reveals his debt to theology and toApocalyptic "great day", which by advance excuse any failings of human justice and therefore humanity's miserablestate. The problem of personal identity is at the center of discussions about life after death, and immortality. In orderto exist after death, there has to be a person after death who is the same person as the person who died.

The bundle theory of the self

David Hume undertook looking at the mind/body problem (and Mind/brain identity). Hume also investigated aperson's character, the relationship between human and animal nature, and the nature of agency. Hume pointed outthat we tend to think that we are the same person we were five years ago. Though we've changed in many respects,the same person appears present as was present then. We might start thinking about which features can be changedwithout changing the underlying self. Hume, however, denies that there is a distinction between the various featuresof a person and the mysterious self that supposedly bears those features. When we start introspecting, "we are neverintimately conscious of anything but a particular perception; man is a bundle or collection of different perceptionswhich succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux and movement".

[1]

It is plain, that in the course of our thinking, and in the constant revolution of our ideas, our imagination runs easilyfrom one idea to any other that resembles it, and that this quality alone is to the fancy a sufficient bond andassociation. It is likewise evident that as the senses, in changing their objects, are necessitated to change themregularly, and take them as they lie contiguous to each other, the imagination must by long custom acquire the samemethod of thinking, and run along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects.

[2]

Note in particular that, in Hume's view, these perceptions do not

belong to

anything. Hume, similar to the Buddha,compares the soul to a commonwealth, which retains its identity not by virtue of some enduring core substance, butby being composed of many different, related, and yet constantly changing elements. The question of personalidentity then becomes a matter of characterizing the loose cohesion of one's personal experience. (Note that in theAppendix to the

Treatise

, Hume said mysteriously that he was dissatisfied with his account of the self, yet he neverreturned to the issue.)In short, what matters for Hume is not that 'identity' exist but that the relations of causation, contiguity, andresemblances obtain among the perceptions. Critics of Hume might point out that in order for the various states andprocesses of the mind to seem unified, there must be something which perceives their unity, the existence of whichwould be no less mysterious than a personal identity.

The no-self theory

Another view of personal identity is known as the no-self theory. According to this view the self cannot be reducedto a bundle because the concept of a self is incompatible with the idea of a bundle. This is because the idea of abundle implies the notion of bodily or psychological relations that do not in fact exist. A principal exponent of thisview is James Giles. Giles argues that the no-self or eliminativist theory and the bundle or reductionist theory are inagreement about the non-existence of a substantival self. The reductionist theory, however, makes the mistake of attempting to resurrect the idea of the self in terms of various accounts about psychological relations. The no-self theory, on the other hand, 'lets the self lie where it has fallen'.

[3]

This is because the no-self theory is a rejection of alltheories of the self, even the bundle theory. On Giles' reading, Hume is actually a no-self theorist and it is a mistaketo attribute to him a reductionist view like the bundle theory. This reading is supported by Hume's famous assertionthat personal identity is a fiction. On this account the Buddhist view of personal identity is also a no-self theoryrather than a reductionist theory. This is because the Buddha clearly rejects all attempts to reconstruct the self interms of consciousness, feelings, or the body.

[4]

Personal identity366

Personal continuity

In psychology (which historically is philosophically concerned with dualism),

personal continuity

, also called

personal persistence

, is the uninterrupted connection concerning a particular person of his or her private life andpersonality. Personal continuity is the union affecting the facets arising from personality in order to avoiddiscontinuities from one moment of time to another time.Personal continuity is an important part of identity; this is the process of ensuring that the quality of the mind areconsistent from moment to the next, generally regarded to comprise qualities such as self-awareness, sentience,sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. Personal continuity isthe property of a continuous and connected period of time and is intimately concerned with a person's body orphysical being. Associationism, or the method of how ideas combine in the mind, allows events or views to beassociated with each other in the mind, thus leading to a form of learning. Associations can result from contiguity,similarity, or contrast. Through contiguity, one associates ideas or events that usually happen to occur at the sametime. Some of these events form an autobiographical memory in which each is a personal representation of thegeneral or specific events and personal facts.

Ego identity

Ego integrity

is the ego's accumulated assurance of its capacity for order and meaning. Ego identity is the accruedconfidence that the inner sameness and continuity prepared in the past are matched by the sameness and continuityof one's meaning for others, as evidenced in the promise of a career. Body and ego must be masters of organ modesand of the other nuclear conflicts in order to face the fear of ego loss in situations which call for self-abandon.

Criticisms and other analysis

The Buddha attacked all attempts to conceive of a fixed self, while stating that holding the view "I have no self" isalso mistaken. This is an example of the middle way charted by the Buddha.Eric Olson gives a definition of a human as a biological organism and asserts that a psychological relation is notnecessary for personal continuity. Olson's personal identity lies in life-sustaining processes instead of bodilycontinuity. This biological approach squares with many other psychological accounts of personal identity but doesnot fall into common metaphysical traps.Other criticisms state that the intuitive concept of self is an evolutionary artifact. In the Freewill model of consciousness the brain models its own unconscious processes just as it models other people. This modeling makesthe assumption that the model will continue to apply through time, and so assumes they are the same person theywere yesterday. This leads to the intuitive sense of self. The sense of

‘

self

’

has also become part of our language, partof our concept of responsibility, and the basis of self based morality.

Thought experiments about personal identity

Bernard Williams presents a thought experiment appealing to our intuitions about what it is to be the same person inthe future. The thought experiment consists of two approaches to the same experiment. For the first approachWilliams suggests that we suppose that there is some process by which subjecting two persons to it can result in thetwo persons have

“

exchanged

”

bodies. The process has put into the body of person B the memories, behavioraldispositions, and psychological characteristics of the person who prior to undergoing the process belonged to personA; and conversely with person B. To show this we are to suppose that before undergoing the process person A and Bare asked to which resulting person, A-Body-Person or B-Body-Person, they wish to receive a punishment andwhich a reward. Upon undergoing the process and receiving either the punishment or reward, it appears to us thatA-Body-Person expresses the memories of choosing who gets which treatment as if that person was person B;conversely with B-Body-Person. This sort of approach to the thought experiment appears to show us that since we

Personal identity367take the person who expresses the psychological characteristics of person A to be person A, then our intuition is thatpsychological continuity is the criterion for personal identity.The second approach is to suppose that you are told that you will have your memories erased and then you will betortured. Are you to be afraid of being tortured? The intuition is that you probably are afraid of being tortured, sinceit will still be you despite not having your memories. Next, we are asked to consider several similar scenarios. Youhave your memories erased, you are given new

“

fake

”

memories, and then you are to be tortured; You have yourmemories erased,you are given copiesof another person's memories, and then you are to be tortured; You have your memories erased,you are given another person's genuine memories, and then you are to be tortured; You have yourmemories erased,you are givenanother person

’

s genuine memories, that person is given your memories, and thenyou are to be tortured. Our intuitionis that in all these cases we are to be afraid of being tortured, that is it is still usdespite having ourmemories erased and receiving new memories. However, the last scenario is an identical scenarioto the one in the first approach. In the first case, our intuition shows us that our psychological continuity is thecriterion for personal identity, but in second case, our intuition is that it is our bodily continuity that is the criterionfor personal identity. To resolve this conflict Williams feels our intuition in the second approach is stronger and if hewas given the choice of distributing a punishment and a reward he would want his body-person to receive the rewardand the other body-person to receive the punishment, even if that other body-person has his memories.Derek Parfit presents a thought experiment designed to bring out our intuitions about the corporeal continuity. Thisthought experiment discusses casesin which aperson is teletransported from Earth to Mars. In the one case, the person enters the teletransporter andhas each molecule of hisbody disassembled, teletransported to Mars, and then reassembled. In another case theperson enters the teletransporter where that person

’

s body is destroyed while all theexact states of that person

’

s cells are recorded. This information is then teletransported to Mars, where another machine uses organic material to produce a perfect copy of that person

’

s body. The question is whether in either of these cases the person on Mars is identical to the person on Earth. Suppose that these two cases are just the furthestopposite points on a spectrum. In-between these two cases there are more cases in which an increase amount of theperson on Mars is constituted of the numerically identical matter as the person on Earth. The question for that thecriterion for personal identity becomes where on this spectrum does the person on Mars stop being identical to theperson on Earth. Is it at 1, 51, or 99.9 percent? It appears that we are not able to draw a line. This inability appears toshow that having a numerically identical physical body is not the criterion for personal identity.

Notes

[1]

A Treatise of Human Nature

, I, IV, vi[2]

A Treatise of Human Nature

, 4.1, 2.[3]James Giles,

No Self to be Found: The Search for Personal Identity

, University Press of America, 1997, p. 10[4]James Giles, 'The No-Self Theory: Hume, Buddhism, and Personal Identity,

Philosophy East and West

, 42, 1993

References

General information

•Vere Claiborne Chappell,

The Cambridge Companion to Locke

. Cambridge University Press, 1994. 343 pages.ISBN 0521387728•Harold W. Noonan,

Personal Identity

. Routledge, 2003. 296 pages. ISBN 0415273153•Søren Kierkegaard,

Either/Or

•Søren Kierkegaard,

The Sickness Unto Death

•Daniel Dennett,

Where am I?

•Derek Parfit,

Reasons and Persons

, part 3.•Bernard Williams,

The Self and the Future

, in

Philosophical Review

79.•John Locke,

Of Ideas of Identity and Diversity

Personal identity368•E. J. Lowe,

A Survey of Metaphysics

, chapters 2,3, 4.•J. Cim & E.Sosa,

A Companion to Metaphysics

. Page 380, "persons and personal identity".•Mark Siderits,

Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy

. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2003. 231 pages. ISBN0754634736•Marc Slors,

The Diachronic Mind

. Springer, 2001. 234 pages. ISBN 0792369785•James Giles,

No Self to be Found: the Search for Personal Identity

University Press of America, 1997.•Shaun Gallagher, Jonathan Shear,

Models of the Self

. Imprint Academic, 1999. 524 pages. ISBN 0907845096•E. Jonathan Lowe,

The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time

. Oxford University Press, 2001.288 pages. ISBN 0199244995•Eric Todd Olson,

The Human Animal: Personal Identity Without Psychology

. Oxford University Press, 1997. 189pages. ISBN 0195134230•John Perry,

The problem of personal identity

. 1975.•John Perry, ed.

Personal Identity

. Berkeley: University of California Press.•Thomas Reid,

Of identity. Of Mr. Locke's account of our personal identity

. In Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. Reprinted in Perry, ed. 1975.•J. Butler,

Of personal identity

. In J. Angus, ed. The Analogy of Religion. London.•G Kopf,

Beyond Personal Identity: Dogen, Nishida, and a Phenomenology of No-Self

. Routledge, 2001. ISBN0700712178•John Perry,

A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality

. ISBN 0-915144-53-0•HB Paksoy,

IDENTITIES: How Governed, Who pays?

JA71 .P35 2001. ISBN 0-9621379-0-3 * (http://vlib.

iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/paksoy-7/)•A. E. Pitson,

Hume's Philosophy of the Self

. Routledge, 2002. 224 pages. ISBN 041524801•Brian Garrett,

Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness

. Routledge, 1998. 137 pages. ISBN 0415165733•E.J Lowe, An Introduction to Philosophy of the Mind. Cambridge University Press, 2000.•Michael Metzeltin,

Wege zur Europäischen Identität. Individuelle, nationalstaatliche und supranationale Identitätskonstrukte

, Berlin, Frank & Timme, 2010. 285 pages. ISBN 978-3-86596-297-3

Articles and publications

•M Kapstein, (Review)

Collins, Parfit, and the Problem of Personal Identity in Two Philosophical Traditions

.Philosophy East and West, 1986.•N Agar,

Functionalism and Personal Identity

. Nous, 2003.•Christine M. Korsgaard,

Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit

. Philosophy andPublic Affairs, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Spring, 1989), pp. 101-132.•Andrew Brennan,

Personal identity and personal survival

. Analysis, 42, 44-50. 1982.•Lloyd Fields,

Parfit on personal identity and desert

. Phil Quarterly, 37, 432-441. 1987.•Brian Garrett,

Personal identity and extrinsicness

. Mind, 97, 105-109. 1990.•Derek Parfit,

Personal identity

. Philosophical Review, 80, no.1, 3-27. 1971.•John Robinson,

Personal identity and survival

. Journal of Philosophy, 85, 319-328. 1988.•E J Borowski,

Diachronic Identity as Relative Identity

. The Philosophical Quarterly, 1975.•R W Perrett, C Barton,

Personal Identity, Reductionism and the Necessity of Origins

. Erkenntnis, 1999.•B Williams,

Bodily Continuity and Personal Identity

. Analysis, 1960.•B Romero,

Self-maintenance therapy in Alzheimer's disease

. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 2001.•BM Ross,

Remembering the Personal Past: Descriptions of Autobiographical Memory

. Oxford University Press,1991. ISBN 0195068947•D Mohr,

Development of attributes of personal identity

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The Religious Sentiments of the Human Mind

. 1888.

Personal identity369•DJ Kroger,

Identity Development: Adolescence Through Adulthood

. Sage Publications Inc., 2006. 303 pages.ISBN 0761929606•G Foulds,

Personal continuity and psycho-pathological disruption

. PMID 14197795•GF Hellden,

Personal Context and Continuity of Human Thought: Recurrent Themes in a Longitudinal Study of Students' Conceptions

.•MJ Chandler, JE Marcia, B Publishers,

Personal Persistence, Identity Development, and Suicide

. BlackwellPublishing, 2003. ISBN 1405118792•J Copner,

The Faith of a Realist

. Williams and Norgate, 1890. 351 pages.•J Habermas,

The paradigm shift in Mead

. In M. Aboulafia (Ed.),

Philosophy, social theory, and the thought of George Herbert Mead

1991. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.•J Jacobson,

Islam in Transition: Religion and Identity Among British Pakistani Youth

. Routledge, 1998. 177pages. ISBN 0415170850•P. Ricoeur,

Soi-même comme un autre

, 1990. Paris:Seuil. (en: Oneself as another)•J Sully,

Illusions: A Psychological Study

. Appleton, 1881. 372 pages.•JC LaVoie,

Ego identity formation in middle adolescence

. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 1976.•JM Shorter,

More About Bodily Continuity and Personal Identity

. Analysis, 1962.•S Seligman, RS Shanok,

Subjectivity, Complexity and the Social World

. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 1995.•SD Bozinovski,

Self-Neglect Among the Elderly: Maintaining Continuity of Self

. DIANE Publishing, 1998. 434pages. ISBN 0788174568•W Greve, K Rothermund, D Wentura,

The Adaptive Self: Personal Continuity and Intentional Self-development

.2005.•WE Conn,

Erikson

’

s

“

identity

”

: an essay on the psychological foundations of religious ethics

.

Online articles

•Carsten Korfmacher, 'Personal Identity' (http://www.

iep.utm.

edu/p/person-i.htm), in "The InternetEncyclopedia of Philosophy"•Roots, Identity, Nationality (http://www.polyarchy.

org/paradigm/english/magic.

html#roots) A brief criticalanalysis of the concept of identity•Phineas Parkhurst Quimby on Personal Identity (http://phineasquimby.

com/personal_identity.

html)•Max More, The Diachronic Self (http://www.

maxmore.com/disscont.

htm) : Identity, Continuity,Transformation.•Vakhtangi Makhniahvilim Parfit and Whitehead on personal identity (http://www.ctr4process.

org/publications/ SeminarPapers/27-1Makhniashvili.

pdf).•Personal Identity, Reductionism and the Necessity of Origins (http://www.

springerlink.

com/content/ j57u27w53p53r2x7/).

Erkenntnis

. Volume 51, Numbers 2-3 / November, 1999.•V Chappell, Locke on Consciousness (http://philosophy.

fas.

nyu.

edu/docs/IO/1650/chappell.pdf).philosophy.fas.nyu.edu.•James Giles, The No-Self Theory: Hume, Buddhism, and Personal Identity (http://ccbs.

ntu.

edu.

tw/ FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/james1.

htm), Philosophy East and West, 1993.•The Unity of Consciousness (http://www.

science.uva.

nl/~seop/entries/consciousness-unity/). science.uva.nl.•D Cole, Artificial intelligence and personal identity (http://www.springerlink.

com/index/T130331427116747.pdf). Synthese, 1991.•Nervous system development -- network origins (http://www.benbest.

com/science/anatmind/anatmd4.

html).benbest.com.•'Brain Death and Technological Change: Personal Identity, Neural Prostheses and Uploading' (http://www.changesurfer.

com/Hlth/BD/Brain.html)•Forum on Personal Identity (http://www.

ibiblio.org/jstrout/identity/)

Personal identity370•The Immateriality of the Soul and Personal Identity (http://plato.stanford.

edu/entries/locke/supplement.html)•Personal Identity

—

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.

stanford.

edu/entries/identity-personal/ )•'Personal Identity and the Methodology of Imaginary Cases' (http://service.

phil-fak.

uni-duesseldorf.

de/ ezpublish/index.

php/article/articleview/157/1/19/)•Personal Identity Syllabus

—

'The Metaphysics of Persons' (http://www.uky.

edu/~cperring/PIsyl.html)•PHI 330 Homepage

—

Metaphysics (http://www4.

ncsu.

edu/~carroll/META-SYL-S00.

htm)•PHL 242-442

—

Metaphysics (http://www.

courses.

rochester.

edu/uzquiano/PHL242/index02.

html)•'Staying Alive The Personal Identity Game (http://www.

philosophers.

co.

uk/games/identity.

htm)•Tannsjo, Torbjorn

—

'Morality and Personal Identity' (http://www.

lucs.

lu.

se/spinning/categories/moral/ Tannsjo/)•Topics in Metaphysics

—

Personal Identity (http://www.

fordham.

edu/philosophy/graduate/syllabi/ phga6402_topics_metaphysics.

htm)•20th WCP: Persons and Personal Identity (http://www.bu.

edu/wcp/MainPPer.

htm)•The Duplicates Paradox (http://www.

benbest.com/philo/doubles.

html) by Ben Best; theories about theproblem of

personal continuity

.•William H. Swatos (Jr. Editor),

Identity

(http://hirr.

hartsem.

edu/ency/identity.

htm). Encyclopedia of Religionand Society.•

Ego identity formation in middle adolescence

(http://www.springerlink.

com/index/T603517V01711846.

pdf).springerlink.com.•

Personal Identity & Immortality

(http://individual.

utoronto.

ca/weisberg/phl105/docs/lecture_notes/ Personal_Identity.

pdf)

'. individual.utoronto.ca.

Personal life

The home often reflects many aspects of one's personal life.

Personal life

is the course of an individual'slife, especially when viewed as the sum of personal choices contributing to one'spersonal identity.

[1]

It is a common notion inmodern existence

—

although more so inmore prosperous parts of the world such asWestern Europe and North America. Inthese areas, there are service industrieswhich are designed to help people improvetheir personal lives via counselling or lifecoaching.

[2]

Personal life371

History

Humans traditionally live infamily-based social structures andartificial shelters.

In the past, before modern technology largely alleviated the problem of economicscarcity in industrialised countries, most people spent a large portion of theirtime attempting to provide their basic survival needs, including water, food, andprotection from the weather.

[3]

Survival skills were necessary for the sake of bothself and community; food needed to be harvested and shelters needed to bemaintained.

[4]

There was little privacy in a community, and people wereidentified by their social role.

[5]

Jobs were assigned out of necessity rather thanpersonal choice.

[6]

Furthermore, individuals in many ancient cultures primarily viewed theirself-existence under the aspect of a larger social whole, often one withmythological underpinnings which placed the individual in relation to thecosmos.

[7]

People in such cultures found their identity not through theirindividual choices

—

indeed, they may not have been able to conceive a choicewhich was purely individual. Such individuals, if asked to describe themselves,would speak of the collective of which they were part: the tribe, the Church, the nation.

[8]

Even now, survival issuesare still dominant in many countries and societies. For example, the continents of Africa and Asia are still largelymired in poverty and third-world conditions, without technology, secure shelter, or reliable food sources. In suchplaces, the concepts of a "personal life", "self-actualization", "personal fulfillment", or "privacy" are largelyunaffordable luxuries.

[9]

The English philosopher, John Locke, was one of the earliest to discuss the concept of individual rights. In the 17thcentury, he promoted the natural rights of the individual to life, liberty, and property, and included the pursuit of happiness as one of the individual's goals.

Sociology

Increasingly, leisure time is spent on computergames.

The notion of a personal life, as now understood, is in part a creation of modern Western society. In the United States, especially, privacy ishighly valued. Since the colonial period, Americans have been notedfor their individualism and their pursuit of self-definition.

[10]

Indeed,the United States Declaration of Independence and the Constitutionexplicitly raise the pursuit of happiness and the expectation of privacyto the level of rights.In modern times, many people have come to think of their personallives as separate from their work.

[11]

Work and recreation are distinct;one is either on the job or not, and the transition is abrupt. Employeeshave certain hours they are bound to work, and work duringrecreational time is rare. This may be related to the continuing specialization of jobs and the demand for increasedefficiency, both at work and at home. The common phrase "Work hard, play hard" illustrates this mindset. There is agrowing trend, however, toward living more holistically and minimizing such rigid distinctions between work andplay, in order to achieve the right work

–

life balance.The concept of personal life also tends to be associated with the way individuals dress, the food they eat, theirschooling and further education as well as their hobbies, leisure activities, and cultural interests. Increasingly, in thedeveloped world, a person's daily life is also influenced by their leisure use of consumer electronics such astelevisions, computers and the Internet, mobile phones and digital cameras.

[12]

Personal life372Other factors affecting personal life are an individual's health, personal relationships, pets as well as his home andpersonal possessions.

Leisure activities

Kabukicho is Tokyo's entertainment district.

The way in which individuals make use of their spare time also playsan important role in defining their personal lives. In general, leisureactivities can be categorised as either passive, in cases when no realeffort is required, or active, when substantial physical or mental energyis needed.

[13]

Passive activities include watching television, listening to music,watching sports activities or going to the cinema. The individualsimply relaxes without any special effort.Active activities may be more or less intensive ranging from walking,through jogging and cycling to sports such as tennis or football.Playing chess or undertaking creative writing might also be considered as demanding as these require a fair amountof mental effort.Based on 2007 data, a US survey on use of leisure time found that the daily use of leisure time by individuals over15 averaged 4.9 hours. Of this, more than half (2.6 hours) was spent on watching TV while only 19 minutes wasspent on active participation in sports and exercise.

[14]

Privacy

Privacy has been understood as entailing two different concepts; namely informational privacy and decisionalprivacy. The former concerns the right to be left alone in respect of the most intimate details of one's personal lifeand is a more accepted doctrine than the latter which concerns freedom from undue regulation and control.

[15]

References

[1]Baker, Maureen (2007).

Choices and Constraints in Family Life

. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195421057.[2]Williams, Patrick; Davis, Deborah C. (2007).

Therapist as life coach: an introduction for counselors and other helping professionals

. W. W.Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393705225.[3]Van Loon, Hendrik (1921).

The Story of Mankind

(http://etext.

virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/VanStor.

html). New York: Boni andLiveright, Inc.. .[4]Gupta, Anil K. (10). "Origin of agriculture and domestication of plants and animals linked to early Holocene climate amelioration" (http:// www.

ias.

ac.

in/currsci/jul102004/54.pdf).

Current Science

87

(1). .[5]Barnard, Alan J. (2004).

Hunter-gatherers in history, archaeology and anthropology

. Berg Publishers. ISBN 9781859738252.[6]"Why did anthropologists get interested in peasants?" (http://era.anthropology.

ac.

uk/Era_Resources/Era/Peasants/intro2.

html).

Experience Rich Anthropology

. University of Kent at Canterbury. . Retrieved 26 February 2011.[7]Percy, Walker (2000).

Lost in the cosmos: the last self-help book

. Macmillan. ISBN 9780312253998.[8]Ashton-Jones, Evelyn; Charles Lindholm (1991). "Life behind the Veil".

The Gender reader

. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. pp. 252.ISBN 0205128068.[9]Maslow, A. H. (1943). "A Theory of Human Motivation" (http://psychclassics.yorku.

ca/Maslow/motivation.

htm).

Psychological Review

50

: 370

–

396. doi:10.1037/h0054346. .[10]de Tocqueville, Alexis (1840).

Democracy in America

(http://xroads.virginia.

edu/~HYPER/DETOC/home.

html). London: Saundersand Otley. .[11]Best, Shaun (2009).

Leisure Studies: Themes and Perspectives

(http://books.google.

com/?id=P8Pr8SYBmI8C&pg=PA201&dq=work+leisure#v=onepage&q=work leisure&f=false). SAGE Publications. pp. 201. ISBN 9781412903868. .[12]Shah, Agam. "Netbooks Propel Global Semiconductor Sales" (http://www.pcworld.

com/article/173052/ netbooks_propel_global_semiconductor_sales.html).

PCWorld

. PCWorld Communications, Inc.. . Retrieved 26 February 2011.[13]Stebbins, Robert A. (November 2002). "Choice and Experiential Definitions of Leisure" (http://people.

ucalgary.

ca/~stebbins/ reflections1.

pdf).

LSA Newsletter

63

. .

Personal life373

[14]"Leisure Time on an Average Day" (http://www.bls.gov/tus/charts/leisure.htm).

American Time Use Survey

. Bureau of Labor Statistics.. Retrieved 26 February 2011.[15]Kumar, Krishna, et al (997).

Public and private in thought and practice : perspectives on a grand dichotomy

. Chicago; London: TheUniversity of Chicago Press. pp. 383. ISBN 0226886247.

Further reading

•

The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

(1901)

–

Sigmund Freud•

Critique of Everyday Life

(1947)

–

Henri Lefebvre•

The Revolution of Everyday Life

(1967)

–

Raoul Vaneigem•

The Practice of Everyday Life

(1974)

–

Michel de Certeau•

The Everyday Life Reader

, 2001, edited by Ben Highmore. ISBN 041523025X•

English Life and Leisure. A social study.

, (1952)

–

Seebohm Rowntree•

Ways of Living: Work, Community and Lifestyle Choice

(2009)

–

Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed. ISBN0230202284•Sociological Ambition

(2001)

–

Chris Shilling and Philip A Mellor

(http://books.

google.

com/ books?id=srecYWCbE_UC&printsec=frontcover&hl=da&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false''The), ISBN 9780761965480•Thinking About Life (http://www.scribd.com/doc/35765081/Thinking-About-Life) A thoughtful

Phenomenology

(from Greek:

phainómenon

"that which appears"; and

lógos

"study") is a broad philosophicalmovement emphasizing the study of conscious experience. It was founded in the early years of the 20th century byEdmund Husserl, expanded together with a circle of his followers at the universities of Göttingen and Munich inGermany, and spread across to France, the United States, and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed fromHusserl's early work.Phenomenology, in Husserl's conception, is primarily concerned with the systematic reflection on and study of thestructures of consciousness, and the phenomena that appear in acts of consciousness. This PhenomenologicalOntology, or understanding of being, can be clearly differentiated from the Cartesian method of analysis which seesthe world as objects, sets of objects, and objects acting and reacting upon one an other.Husserl's conception of phenomenology has been criticised and developed not only by himself but also by hisstudents Edith Stein and Martin Heidegger, by existentialists, such as Max Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann, MauriceMerleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and by other philosophers, such as Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, andsociologists Alfred Schütz and Eric Voegelin.

Overview

Stephen Hicks

[1]

writes that to understand phenomenology, one must identify its roots in the philosophyof Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). In his

the Critique of Pure Reason

, Kant distinguished between "phenomenon", (objects as interpreted by human sensibility and understanding), and "noumena" (objects as

things-in-themselves

,which humans cannot directly experience). According to Hicks, 19th Century Kantiansim could be classified in twobroad camps: structural linguistics and phenomenology. Hicks writes, "In effect, the Structuralists were seekingsubjective noumenal categories, and the Phenomenologists were content with describing the phenomena withoutasking what connection to an external reality those experiences might have."

[2]

In its most basic form, phenomenology thus attempts to create conditions for the objective study of topics usuallyregarded as subjective: consciousness and the content of conscious experiences such as judgments, perceptions, and

Phenomenology374emotions. Although phenomenology seeks to be scientific, it does not attempt to study consciousness from theperspective of clinical psychology or neurology. Instead, it seeks through systematic reflection to determine theessential properties and structures of consciousness and conscious experience.Husserl derived many important concepts central to phenomenology from the works and lectures of his teachers, thephilosophers and psychologists Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf.

[3]

An important element of phenomenology thatHusserl borrowed from Brentano is intentionality (often described as "aboutness"), the notion that consciousness isalways consciousness

of

something. The object of consciousness is called the

intentional object

, and this object isconstituted for consciousness in many different ways, through, for instance, perception, memory, retention andprotention, signification, etc. Throughout these different intentionalities, though they have different structures anddifferent ways of being "about" the object, an object is still constituted as the same identical object; consciousness isdirected at the same intentional object in direct perception as it is in the immediately following retention of thisobject and the eventual remembering of it.Though many of the phenomenological methods involve various reductions, phenomenology is, in essence,anti-reductionistic; the reductions are mere tools to better understand and describe the workings of consciousness,not to reduce any phenomenon to these descriptions. In other words, when a reference is made to a thing's

essence

or

idea

, or when one details the constitution of an identical coherent thing by describing what one "really" sees as beingonly these sides and aspects, these surfaces, it does not mean that the thing is only and exclusively what is describedhere: The ultimate goal of these reductions is to understand

how

these different aspects are constituted into the actualthing as experienced by the person experiencing it. Phenomenology is a direct reaction to the psychologism andphysicalism of Husserl's time.Although previously employed by Hegel in his

Phenomenology of Spirit

, it was Husserl

’

s adoption of this term (circa1900) that propelled it into becoming the designation of a philosophical school. As a philosophical perspective,phenomenology is its method, though the specific meaning of the term varies according to how it is conceived by agiven philosopher. As envisioned by Husserl, phenomenology is a method of philosophical inquiry that rejects therationalist bias that has dominated Western thought since Plato in favor of a method of reflective attentiveness thatdiscloses the individual

’

s

“

lived experience.

”

[4]

Loosely rooted in an epistemological device, with Sceptic roots,called epoché, Husserl

’

s method entails the suspension of judgment whilerelying on the intuitive grasp of knowledge, free of presuppositions and intellectualizing. Sometimes depictedas the

“

science of experience,

”

thephenomenological method is rooted in intentionality, Husserl

’

s theory of consciousness (developed from Brentano).Intentionality represents an alternative to the representational theory of consciousness, which holds that realitycannot be grasped directly because it is available only through perceptions of reality that are representations of it inthe mind. Husserl countered that consciousness is not

“

in

”

the mind but rather conscious of something other thanitself (the intentional object), whether the object is a substance or a figment of imagination (i.e., the real processesassociated with and underlying the figment). Hence the phenomenological method relies on the description of phenomena as they are given to consciousness, in their immediacy.According to Maurice Natanson (1973, p. 63),

“

The radicality of the phenomenological method is both continuousand discontinuous with philosophy

’

s general effort to subject experience to fundamental, critical scrutiny: to takenothing for granted and to show the warranty for what we claim to know.

”

In practice, it entails an unusual combination of discipline and detachment to suspend, or bracket, theoreticalexplanations and second-hand information while determining one's

“

naive

”

experience of the matter. Thephenomenological method serves to momentarily erase the world of speculation by returning the subject to his or herprimordial experience of the matter, whether the object of inquiry is a feeling, an idea, or a perception. According toHusserl the suspension of belief in what we ordinarily take for granted or infer by conjecture diminishes the power of what we customarily embrace as objective reality. According to Safranski (1998, 72),

“

[Husserl and his followers

’

]great ambition was to disregard anything that had until then been thought or said about consciousness or the world[while] on the lookout for a new way of letting the things [they investigated] approach them, without covering them

Phenomenology375up with what they already knew.

”

Heidegger modified Husserl

’

s conception of phenomenology because of (what Heidegger perceived as) Husserl'ssubjectivist tendencies. Whereas Husserl conceived humans as having been constituted by states of consciousness,Heidegger countered that consciousness is peripheral to the primacy of one

’

s existence (i.e., the mode of being of Dasein), which cannot be reduced to one

’

s consciousness of it. From this angle, one

’

s state of mind is an

“

effect

”

rather than a determinant of existence, including those aspects of existence that one is not conscious of. By shiftingthe center of gravity from consciousness (psychology) to existence (ontology), Heidegger altered the subsequentdirection of phenomenology, making it at once both personal and mysterious. One of the consequences of Heidegger

’

s modification of Husserl

’

s conception of phenomenology was its increased relevance to psychoanalysis.Whereas Husserl gave priority to a depiction of consciousness that was fundamentally alien to the psychoanalyticconception of the unconscious, Heidegger offered a way to conceptualize experience that could accommodate thoseaspects of one

’

s existence that lie on the periphery of sentient awareness.

[5]

[6]

Special terminology

Intentionality

Intentionality refers to the notion that consciousness is always consciousness

of

something. The word itself shouldnot be confused with the "ordinary" use of the word intentional, but should rather be taken as playing on theetymological roots of the word. Originally, intention referred to a "stretching out" ("in tension," lat.

intendere

[7][8]),and in this context it refers to consciousness "

stretching out

" towards its object (although one should be careful withthis image, seeing as there is not some consciousness first that, subsequently, stretches out to its object. Rather,consciousness

occurs as

the simultaneity of a conscious act and its object.) Intentionality is often summed up as"aboutness."Whether this

something

that consciousness is about is in direct perception or in fantasy is inconsequential to theconcept of intentionality itself; whatever consciousness is directed at,

that

is what consciousness is consciousness of.This means that the object of consciousness doesn't

have

to be a

physical

object apprehended in perception: it can just as well be a fantasy or a memory. Consequently, these "structures" of consciousness, i.e., perception, memory,fantasy, etc., are called

intentionalities

.The cardinal principle of phenomenology, the term intentionality originated with the Scholastics in the medievalperiod and was resurrected by Brentano who in turn influenced Husserl

’

s conception of phenomenology, who refinedthe term and made it the cornerstone of his theory of consciousness. The meaning of the term is complex anddepends entirely on how it is conceived by a given philosopher. The term should not be confused with

“

intention

”

orthe psychoanalytic conception of unconscious

“

motive

”

or

“

gain.

”

Intuition

Intuition in phenomenology refers to those cases where the intentional object is directly present to the intentionalityat play; if the intention is "filled" by the direct apprehension of the object, you have an intuited object. Having a cupof coffee in front of you, for instance, seeing it, feeling it, or even imagining it - these are all filled intentions, and theobject is then

intuited

. The same goes for the apprehension of mathematical formulae or a number. If you do nothave the object as referred to directly, the object is not intuited, but still intended, but then

emptily

. Examples of empty intentions can be signitive intentions - intentions that only

imply

or

refer to

their objects.

Phenomenology376

Evidence

In everyday language, we use the word evidence to signify a special sort of relation between a state of affairs and aproposition: State A is evidence for the proposition "A is true." In phenomenology, however, the concept of evidenceis meant to signify the "subjective achievement of truth."

[9]

This is not an attempt to reduce the objective sort of evidence to subjective "opinion," but rather an attempt to describe the structure of having something present inintuition with the addition of having it present as

intelligible

: "Evidence is the successful presentation of anintelligible object, the successful presentation of something whose truth becomes manifest in the evidencing itself."

[10]

Noesis and Noema

In Husserl's phenomenology, which is quite common, this pair of terms, derived from the Greek

nous

(mind),designate respectively the real content, noesis, and the ideal content, noema, of an intentional act (an act of consciousness). The Noesis is the part of the act that gives it a particular sense or character (as in judging orperceiving something, loving or hating it, accepting or rejecting it, and so on). This is real in the sense that it isactually part of what takes place in the consciousness (or psyche) of the subject of the act. The Noesis is alwayscorrelated with a Noema; for Husserl, the full Noema is a complex ideal structure comprising at least a noematicsense and a noematic core. The correct interpretation of what Husserl meant by the Noema has long beencontroversial, but the noematic sense is generally understood as the ideal meaning of the act

[11]

and the noematiccore as the act's referent or object

as it is meant in the act

. One element of controversy is whether this noematicobject is the same as the actual object of the act (assuming it exists) or is some kind of ideal object.

[12]

Empathy and Intersubjectivity

In phenomenology, empathy refers to the experience of another humanbody

as

another. While we often identifyothers with their physical bodies, this type of phenomenology requires that we focus on the subjectivity of the other,as well as our intersubjective engagement with them. In Husserl's original account, this was done by a sort of apperception built on the experiences of your own lived-body. The lived body is your own body as experienced byyourself,

as

yourself. Your own body manifests itself to you mainly as your possibilities of acting in the world. It iswhat lets you reach out and grab something, for instance, but it also, and more importantly, allows for the possibilityof changing your point of view. This helps you differentiate one thing from another by the experience of movingaround it, seeing new aspects of it (often referred to as making the absent present and the present absent), and stillretaining the notion that this is the same thing that you saw other aspects of just a moment ago (it is identical). Yourbody is also experienced as a duality, both as object (you can touch your own hand) and as your own subjectivity(you experience being touched).The experience of your own body as your own subjectivity is then applied to the experience of another's body,which, through apperception, is constituted as another subjectivity. You can thus recognise the Other's intentions,emotions, etc. This experience of empathy is important in the phenomenological account of intersubjectivity. Inphenomenology, intersubjectivity constitutes objectivity (i.e., what you experience as objective is experienced asbeing intersubjectively available - available to all other subjects. This does not imply that objectivity is reduced tosubjectivity nor does it imply a relativist position, cf. for instance intersubjective verifiability).In the experience of intersubjectivity, one also experiences oneself as being a subject among other subjects, and oneexperiences oneself as existing objectively

for

these Others; one experiences oneself as the noema of Others' noeses,or as a subject in another's empathic experience. As such, one experiences oneself as objectively existingsubjectivity. Intersubjectivity is also a part in the constitution of one's lifeworld, especially as "homeworld."

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