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Philosophy of mind

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Philosophy

   A Phrenological mapping of the brain. Phrenology was among the first
   attempts to correlate mental functions with specific parts of the
   brain.
   Enlarge
   A Phrenological mapping of the brain. Phrenology was among the first
   attempts to correlate mental functions with specific parts of the
   brain.

   Philosophy of mind is the philosophical study of the nature of the
   mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, and
   consciousness, and of the nature of their relationship with the
   physical body: the so-called mind-body problem.

   Dualism and monism are two major schools of thought that attempt to
   resolve the mind-body problem. Dualism asserts the separate existence
   of mind and body, and can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle in the
   West and the sankhya school of Hindu philosophy in the East and was
   most precisely formulated in modern terms by René Descartes in the 17th
   century. Monism, first proposed in the West by Parmenides and in modern
   times by Baruch Spinoza, maintains that there is only one substance; in
   the East, rough parallels might be the Hindu concept of Brahman or the
   Tao of Lao Tzu.

   Substance dualists argue that the mind is an independently existing
   substance, while property dualists maintain that the mind is a jumble
   of independent properties that emerge from the brain and cannot be
   reduced to it, but that it is not a distinct substance. Physicalists
   argue that only the brain actually exists, idealists maintain that the
   mind is all that actually exists, and neutral monists adhere to the
   position that there is some other, neutral substance and that both
   matter and mind are properties of this unknown substance. The most
   common monisms in the 20th and 21st centuries have all been variations
   of materialism (or physicalism), including behaviorism, the identity
   theory, and functionalism.

   Most modern philosophers of mind adopt either a reductive or
   non-reductive physicalist position, maintaining in their different ways
   that only the brain exists. Reductivists assert that all mental states
   and properties will eventually be explained by neuroscientific accounts
   of brain processes and states.^, ^, Non-reductionists argue that though
   the brain is all there is, the predicates and vocabulary used in mental
   descriptions and explanations are indispensable and cannot be reduced
   to the language and lower-level explanations of physical science.^,
   Continued neuroscientific progress has helped to clarify some of these
   issues, but they are far from having been resolved, and modern
   philosophers of mind continue to ask, "How can the subjective qualities
   and the intentionality (aboutness) of mental states and properties be
   explained in naturalistic terms?"^,

The mind-body problem

   The mind-body problem is essentially the problem of explaining the
   relationship between minds, or mental processes, and bodily states or
   processes. Our perceptual experiences depend on stimuli which arrive at
   our various sensory organs from the external world and these stimuli
   cause changes in the states of our brain, ultimately causing us to feel
   a sensation which may be pleasant or unpleasant. Someone's desire for a
   slice of pizza will tend to cause that person to move their body in a
   certain manner in a certain direction in an effort to obtain what they
   want. But how is it possible that conscious experiences can arise out
   of an inert lump of gray matter endowed with electrochemical
   properties? How does someone's desire cause that individual's neurons
   to fire and his muscles to contract in exactly the right manner? These
   are some of the essential puzzles that have confronted epistemologists
   and philosophers of mind at least from the time of René Descartes.

Dualist solutions to the mind-body problem

   Dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and
   matter, which begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some
   respects, non-physical. One of the earliest known formulations of
   mind-body dualism existed in the eastern sankhya school of Hindu
   philosophy (c. 650 BCE) which divided the world into purusha
   (mind/spirit) and prakrti (material substance). In the Western
   philosophical tradition, we first encounter similar ideas with the
   writings of Plato and Aristotle, who maintained, for different reasons,
   that man's "intelligence" (a faculty of the mind or soul) could not be
   identified with, or explained in terms of, his physical body.^,

   However, the best-known version of dualism is due to René Descartes
   (1641), and holds that the mind is a non-physical substance. Descartes
   was the first to clearly identify the mind with consciousness 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 still exists today.

Arguments for dualism

   The main argument in favour of dualism is simply that it appeals to the
   common-sense intuition of the vast majority of
   non-philosophically-trained people. If asked what the mind is, the
   average person will usually respond by identifying it with their self,
   their personality, their soul, or some other such entity, and they will
   almost certainly deny that the mind simply is the brain or vice-versa,
   finding the idea that there is just one ontological entity at play to
   be too mechanistic or simply unintelligible. The majority of modern
   philosophers of mind reject dualism, suggesting that these intuitions,
   like many others, are probably misleading. We should use our critical
   faculties, as well as empirical evidence from the sciences, to examine
   these assumptions and determine if there is any real basis to them.

   Another very important, more modern, argument in favour of dualism is
   the idea that the mental and the physical seem to have quite different
   and perhaps irreconcilable properties. Mental events have a certain
   subjective quality to them, whereas physical events obviously do not.
   For example, what does a burned finger feel like? What does blue sky
   look like? What does nice music sound like? Philosophers of mind call
   the subjective aspects of mental events qualia (or raw feels). There is
   something that it is like to feel pain, to see a familiar shade of
   blue, and so on; there are qualia involved in these mental events. And
   the claim is that qualia seem particularly difficult to reduce to
   anything physical.

Interaction dualism

   Portrait of René Descartes by Frans Hals (1648)
   Enlarge
   Portrait of René Descartes by Frans Hals (1648)

   Interactionist dualism, or simply interactionism, is the particular
   form of dualism first espoused by Descartes in the Meditations. In the
   20th century, its major defenders have been Karl Popper and John Carew
   Eccles. It is the view that mental states, such as beliefs and desires,
   causally interact with physical states. Descartes' famous argument for
   this position can be summarized as follows: Fred has a clear and
   distinct idea of his mind as a thinking thing which has no spatial
   extension (i.e., it cannot be measured in terms of length, weight,
   height, and so on) and he also has a clear and distinct idea of his
   body as something that is spatially extended, subject to quantification
   and not able to think. It follows that mind and body are not identical
   because they have radically different properties, according to
   Descartes.

   At the same time, however, it is clear that Fred's mental states
   (desires, beliefs, etc.) have causal effects on his body and
   vice-versa: a child touches a hot stove (physical event) which causes
   pain (mental event) and makes him yell (physical event) which provokes
   a sense of fear and protectiveness in the mother (mental event) and so
   on.

   Descartes' argument obviously depends on the crucial premise that what
   Fred believes to be "clear and distinct" ideas in his mind are
   necessarily true. Most modern philosophers doubt the validity of such
   an assumption, since it has been shown in modern times by Freud (a
   third-person psychologically-trained observer can understand a person's
   unconscious motivations better than he does), by Duhem (a third-person
   philosopher of science can know a person's methods of discovery better
   than he does), by Malinowski (an anthropologist can know a person's
   customs and habits better than he does), and by theorists of perception
   (experiments can make one see things that are not there and scientists
   can describe a person's perceptions better than he can), that such an
   idea of privileged and perfect access to one's own ideas is dubious at
   best.

Other forms of dualism

   Three varieties of dualism. The arrows indicate the direction of the
   causal interactions. Property dualism is not shown.
   Enlarge
   Three varieties of dualism. The arrows indicate the direction of the
   causal interactions. Property dualism is not shown.

   Other important forms of dualism which arose as reactions to, or
   attempts to salvage, the Cartesian version are:

   1) Psycho-physical parallelism, or simply parallelism, is the view that
   mind and body, while having distinct ontological statuses, do not
   causally influence one another, but run along parallel paths (mind
   events causally interact with mind events and brain events causally
   interact with brain events) and only seem to influence each other. This
   view was most prominently defended by Gottfried Leibniz. Although
   Leibniz was actually an ontological monist who believed that only one
   fundamental substance, monads, exists in the universe and everything
   else is reducible to it, he nonetheless maintained that there was an
   important distinction between "the mental" and "the physical" in terms
   of causation. He held that God had arranged things in advance so that
   minds and bodies would be in harmony with each other. This is known as
   the doctrine of pre-established harmony.
   Portrait of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz by Bernhard Christoph Francke
   (circa 1700)
   Enlarge
   Portrait of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz by Bernhard Christoph Francke
   (circa 1700)

   2) Occasionalism is the view espoused by Nicholas Malebranche which
   asserts that all supposedly causal relations between physical events or
   between physical and mental events are not really causal at all. While
   body and mind are still different substances on this view, causes
   (whether mental or physical) are related to their effects by an act of
   God's intervention on each specific occasion.

   3) Epiphenomenalism is a doctrine first formulated by Thomas Henry
   Huxley. Fundamentally, it consists in the view that mental phenomena
   are causally inefficacious. 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. The view has been defended
   most strongly in recent times by Frank Jackson.

   4) Property dualism asserts that when matter is organized 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. These emergent properties have an independent
   ontological status and cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of,
   the physical substrate from which they emerge. This position is
   espoused by David Chalmers and has undergone something of a renaissance
   in recent years.

Monist solutions to the mind-body problem

   Baruch (de) Spinoza
   Enlarge
   Baruch (de) Spinoza

   In contrast to dualism, monism states that there is only one
   fundamental substance. Today the most common forms of monism in Western
   philosophy are physicalistic. Physicalistic monism asserts that the
   only existing substance is physical, in some sense of that term to be
   clarified by our best science. However, a variety of formulations are
   possible (see below). Another form of monism is that which states that
   the only existing substance is mental. Such idealistic monism is
   currently somewhat uncommon in the West.

   Phenomenalism, the theory that all that exists are the representations
   (or sense data) of external objects in our minds and not the objects
   themselves, was adopted by Bertrand Russell and many of the logical
   positivists during the early 20th century. It lasted for only a very
   brief period of time. A third possibility is to accept the existence of
   a basic substance which is neither physical nor mental. The mental and
   physical would both be properties of this neutral substance. Such a
   position was adopted by Baruch Spinoza and popularized by Ernst Mach in
   the 19th century. This neutral monism, as it is called, resembles
   property dualism. In the following discussion, only physicalistic
   monisms are considered. (See also: idealism.)

Behaviorism

   Behaviorism dominated philosophy of mind for much of the 20th century,
   especially the first half. In psychology, behaviorism developed as a
   reaction to the inadequacies of introspectionism. Introspective reports
   on one's own interior mental life are not subject to careful
   examination for accuracy and are not generalizable. Without
   generalizability and the possibility of third-person examination, the
   behaviorists argued, science is simply not possible. The way out for
   psychology was to eliminate the idea of an interior mental life (and
   hence an ontologically independent mind) altogether and focus instead
   on the description of observable behaviour.

   Parallel to these developments in psychology, a philosophical
   behaviorism (sometimes called logical behaviorism) was developed. This
   is characterized by a strong verificationism, which generally considers
   unverifiable statements about interior mental life senseless. But what
   are mental states if they are not interior states on which one can make
   introspective reports? The answer of the behaviorist is that mental
   states do not exist but are actually just descriptions of behavior
   and/or dispositions to behave made by external third parties in order
   to explain and predict others' behaviour.

   Philosophical behaviorism, notably held by Wittgenstein, has fallen out
   of favour in since the latter half of the 20th century, coinciding with
   the rise of cognitivism. Cognitivists reject behaviorism due to several
   perceived problems. For, behaviorism goes against intuition when it
   maintains, for example, that someone is talking about behaviour if she
   reports that she has a wracking headache.

Identity theory

   Type physicalism (or type-identity theory) was developed by John Smart
   and Ullin Place as a direct reaction to the failure of behaviorism.
   These philosophers reasoned that, if mental states are something
   material, but not behaviour, then mental states are probably identical
   to internal states of the brain. In very simplified terms: a mental
   state M is nothing other than brain state B. The mental state "desire
   for a cup of coffee" would thus be nothing more than the "firing of
   certain neurons in certain brain regions".
   The classic Identity theory and Anomalous Monism in contrast. For the
   Identity theory, every token instantiation of a single mental type
   corresponds (as indicated by the arrows) to a physical token of a
   single physical type. For anomalous monism, the token-token
   correspondences can fall outside of the type-type correspondences. The
   result is token identity.
   Enlarge
   The classic Identity theory and Anomalous Monism in contrast. For the
   Identity theory, every token instantiation of a single mental type
   corresponds (as indicated by the arrows) to a physical token of a
   single physical type. For anomalous monism, the token-token
   correspondences can fall outside of the type-type correspondences. The
   result is token identity.

   Despite a certain initial plausibility, the identity theory faces at
   least one heavy challenge in the form of the thesis of multiple
   realizability, which was first formulated by Hilary Putnam. It seems
   clear that not only humans, but also amphibians, for example, can
   experience pain. On the other hand, it seems very improbable that all
   of these diverse organisms with the same pain are in the same identical
   brain state. If this is not the case however, then pain cannot be
   identical to a certain brain state. Thus the identity theory is
   empirically unfounded.

   But even if this is the case, it does not follow that identity theories
   of all types must be abandoned. According to token identity theories,
   the fact that a certain brain state is connected with only one "mental"
   state of a person does not have to mean that there is an absolute
   correlation between types of mental states and types of brain state.
   The type-token distinction can be illustrated by a simple example: the
   word "green" contains four types of letters (g, r,e, n) with two tokens
   (occurrences) of the letter e along with one each of the others. The
   idea of token identity is that only particular occurrences of mental
   events are identical with particular occurrences or tokenings of
   physical events. Anomalous monism (see below) and most other
   non-reductive physicalisms are token-identity theories. Despite the
   problems faced by the type identity theory, however, there is a renewed
   interest in it these days, primarily due to the influence of Jaegwon
   Kim.

Functionalism

   Functionalism was formulated by Hilary Putnam and Jerry Fodor as a
   reaction to the inadequacies of the identity theory. Putnam and Fodor
   saw mental states in terms of an empirical computational theory of the
   mind. At about 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. Finally, Wittgenstein's idea of meaning as use led to a version
   of functionalism as a theory of meaning, further developed by Wilfrid
   Sellars and Gilbert Harman.

   What all these different varieties of functionalism share in common is
   the thesis that mental states are essentially characterized by their
   causal relations with other mental states and with sensory inputs and
   behavioural outputs. That is, functionalism quantifies over, or
   abstracts away from, the details of the physical implementation of a
   mental state by characterizing it in terms of non-mental functional
   properties. For example, a kidney is characterized scientifically by
   its functional role in filtering blood and maintaining certain chemical
   balances. From this point of view, it does not really matter whether
   the kidney be made up of organic tissue, plastic nanotubes or silicon
   chips: it is the role that it plays and its relations to other organs
   that define it as a kidney.

Nonreductive physicalism

   Many philosophers hold firmly to two essential convictions with regard
   to mind-body relations:

   1. Physicalism is true and mental states must be physical states.

   2. All reductionist proposals are unsatisfactory: mental states cannot
   be reduced to behaviour, brain states or functional states.

   Hence, the question arises whether there can still be a non-reductive
   physicalism. Donald Davidson's anomalous monism is an attempt to
   formulate such a physicalism.

   The idea is often formulated in terms of 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 some change in the
   physical.

Eliminative materialism

   If one is a materialist but believes that all reductive efforts have
   failed and that a non-reductive materialism is incoherent, then one can
   adopt a final, more radical position: eliminative materialism.
   Eliminative materialists maintain that mental states are fictitious
   entities introduced by everyday " folk psychology". Should "folk
   psychology", which eliminativists view as a quasi-scientific theory, be
   proven wrong in the course of scientific development, then we must also
   abolish all of the entities postulated by it.

   Eliminativists such as Patricia and Paul Churchland often invoke the
   fate of other, erroneous popular theories and ontologies which have
   arisen in the course of history.^, For example, the belief in
   witchcraft as a cause of people's problems turned out to be wrong and
   the consequence is that most people no longer believe in the existence
   of witches. Witchcraft is not explained in terms of some other
   phenomenon, but rather eliminated from the discourse.

Linguistic criticism of the mind-body problem

   Each attempt to answer the mind-body problem encounters substantial
   problems. Some philosophers argue that this is because there is an
   underlying conceptual confusion. Such philosophers reject the mind-body
   problem as an illusory problem. Such a position is represented in
   analytic philosophy these days, for the most part, by the followers of
   Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Wittgensteinian tradition of linguistic
   criticism. The exponents of this position explain that it is an error
   to ask how mental and biological states fit together. Rather it should
   simply be accepted that humans can be described in different ways - for
   instance, in a mental and in a biological vocabulary. Illusory problems
   arise if one tries to describe the one in terms of the other's
   vocabulary or if the mental vocabulary is used in the wrong contexts.
   This is the case for instance, if one searches for mental states of the
   brain. The brain is simply the wrong context for the use of mental
   vocabulary - the search for mental states of the brain is therefore a
   category error or a pure conceptual confusion.

   Today, such a position is often adopted by interpreters of Wittgenstein
   such as Peter Hacker. However, Hilary Putnam, the inventor of
   functionalism, has also adopted the position that the mind-body problem
   is an illusory problem which should be dissolved according to the
   manner of Wittgenstein.

Naturalism and its problems

   The thesis of physicalism is that the mind is part of the material (or
   physical) world. Such a position faces the fundamental problem that the
   mind has certain properties that no material thing possesses.
   Physicalism must therefore explain how it is possible that these
   properties can emerge from a material thing nevertheless. The project
   of providing such an explanation is often referred to as the "
   naturalization of the mental." What are the crucial problems that this
   project must attempt to resolve? The most well-known are probably the
   following two:

Qualia

   Many mental states have the property of being experienced subjectively
   in different ways by different individuals. For example, it is
   obviously characteristic of the mental state of pain that it hurts.
   Moreover, your sensation of pain may not be identical with mine, since
   we have no way of measuring how much something hurts or describing
   exactly how it feels to hurt. Where does such an experience (quale)
   come from? Nothing indicates that a neural or functional state can be
   accompanied by such a pain experience. Often the point is formulated as
   follows: the existence of cerebral events, in and of themselves, cannot
   explain why they are accompanied by these corresponding qualitative
   experiences. Why do many cerebral processes occur with an accompanying
   experiential aspect in consciousness? It seems impossible to explain.

   Yet it also seems to many that science will eventually have to explain
   such experiences. This follows from the logic of reductive
   explanations. If I try to explain a phenomenon reductively (e.g.,
   water), I also have to explain why the phenomenon has all of the
   properties that it has (e.g., fluidity, transparency).In the case of
   mental states, this means that there needs to be an explanation of why
   they have the property of being experienced in a certain way.

Intentionality

   John Searle - one of the most influential philosophers of mind,
   proponent of biological naturalism (Berkeley 2002)
   Enlarge
   John Searle - one of the most influential philosophers of mind,
   proponent of biological naturalism (Berkeley 2002)

   Intentionality is the capacity of mental states to be directed towards
   (about) or be in relation with something in the external world. This
   property of mental states entails that they have contents and semantic
   referents and can therefore be assigned truth values. When one tries to
   reduce these states to natural processes there arises a problem:
   natural processes are not true or false, they simply happen. It would
   not make any sense to say that a natural process is true or false. But
   mental ideas or judgments are true or false, so how then can mental
   states (ideas or judgments) be natural processes? The possibility of
   assigning semantic value to ideas must mean that such ideas are about
   facts. Thus, for example, the idea that Herodotus was a historian
   refers to Herodotus 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 relation come from? In the brain, there are only
   electrochemical processes and these seem not to have anything to do
   with Herodotus.

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 not independent of bodily processes, the descriptions
   that the natural sciences furnish of human beings play an important
   role in the philosophy of mind. There are many scientific disciplines
   that study processes related to the mental. The list of such sciences
   includes: biology, computer science, cognitive science, cybernetics,
   linguistics, medicine, pharmacology, psychology, etc.

Neurobiology

   The theoretical background of biology, as is the case with modern
   natural sciences in general, is fundamentally materialistic. The
   objects of study are, in the first place, physical processes, which are
   considered to be the foundations of mental activity and behaviour. The
   increasing success of biology in the explanation of mental phenomena
   can be seen by the absence of any empirical refutation of its
   fundamental presupposition: "there can be no change in the mental
   states of a person without a change in brain states."

   Within the field of neurobiology, there are many subdisciplines which
   are concerned with the relations between mental and physical states and
   processes:
     * Sensory neurophysiology investigates the relation between the
       processes of perception and stimulation.
     * Cognitive neuroscience studies the correlations between mental
       processes and neural processes.
     * Neuropsychology describes the dependence of mental faculties on
       specific anatomical regions of the brain.
     * Lastly, evolutionary biology studies the origins and development of
       the human nervous system and, in as much as this is the basis of
       the mind, also describes the ontogenetic and phylogenetic
       development of mental phenomena beginning from their most primitive
       stages.

   Since the 1980's, sophisticated neuroimaging procedures, such as fMRI
   (above), have furnished increasing knowledge about the workings of the
   human brain, shedding light on ancient philosophical problems.
   Enlarge
   Since the 1980's, sophisticated neuroimaging procedures, such as fMRI
   (above), have furnished increasing knowledge about the workings of the
   human brain, shedding light on ancient philosophical problems.

   The methodological breakthroughs of the neurosciences, in particular
   the introduction of high-tech neuroimaging procedures, has propelled
   scientists toward the elaboration of increasingly ambitious research
   programs: one of the main goals is to describe and comprehend the
   neural processes which correspond to mental functions (see: neural
   correlate). A very small number of neurobiologists, such as Emil du
   Bois-Reymond and John Eccles have denied the possibility of a
   "reduction" of mental phenomena to cerebral processes, partly for
   religious reasons. However, the contemporary neurobiologist and
   philosopher Gerhard Roth continues to defend a form of "non-reductive
   materialism."

Computer science

   Computer science concerns itself with the automatic processing of
   information (or at least with physical systems of symbols to which
   information is assigned) by means of such things as computers. From the
   beginning, computer programmers have been able to develop programs
   which permit computers to carry out tasks for which organic beings need
   a mind. A simple example is multiplication. But it is clear that
   computers do not use a mind to multiply. Could they, someday, come to
   have what we call a mind? This question has been propelled into the
   forefront of much philosophical debate because of investigations in the
   field of artificial intelligence ("AI").

   Within AI, it is common to distinguish between a modest research
   program and a more ambitious one: this distinction was coined by John
   Searle in terms of a weak AI and a strong AI. The exclusive objective
   of "weak AI", according to Searle, is the successful simulation of
   mental states, with no attempt to make computers become conscious or
   aware, etc. The objective of strong AI, on the contrary, is a computer
   with consciousness similar to that of human beings. The program of
   strong AI goes back to one of the pioneers of computation Alan Turing.
   As an answer to the question "Can computers think?", he formulated the
   famous Turing test. Turing believed that a computer could be said to
   "think" when, if placed in a room by itself next to another room which
   contained a human being and with the same questions being asked of both
   the computer and the human being by a third party human being, the
   computer's responses turned out be to indistinguishable from those of
   the human. Essentially, Turing's view of machine intelligence followed
   the behaviourist model of the mind - intelligence is as intelligence
   does. The Turing test has received many criticisms, among which the
   most famous is probably the Chinese room thought experiment formulated
   by Searle.

   The question about the possible sensitivity ( qualia) of computers or
   robots still remains open. Some computer scientists believe that the
   specialty of AI can still make new contributions to the resolution of
   the "mind body problem". They suggest that based on the reciprocal
   influences between software and hardware that takes place in all
   computers, it is possible that someday theories can be discovered that
   help us to understand the reciprocal influences between the human mind
   and the brain ( wetware).

Psychology

   Psychology is the science that investigates mental states directly. It
   uses generally empirical methods to investigate concrete mental states
   like joy, fear or obsessions. Psychology investigates the laws that
   bind these mental states to each other or with inputs and outputs to
   the human organism.

   An example of this is the psychology of perception. Scientists working
   in this field have discovered general principles of the perception of
   forms. A law of the psychology of forms says that objects that move in
   the same direction are perceived as related to each other. This law
   describes a relation between visual input and mental perceptual states.
   However, it does not suggest anything about the nature of perceptual
   states. The laws discovered by psychology are compatible with all the
   answers to the mind-body problem already described.

Philosophy of mind in the continental tradition

   Most of the discussion in this article has focused on the predominant
   school (or style) of philosophy in modern Western culture, usually
   called analytic philosophy (sometimes also inaccurately described as
   Anglo-American philosophy). Other schools of thought exist, however,
   which are sometimes (also misleadingly) subsumed under the broad label
   of continental philosophy. In any case, the various schools that fall
   under this label ( phenomenology, existentialism, etc.) tend to differ
   from the analytic school in that they focus less on language and
   logical analysis and more on directly understanding human existence and
   experience. With reference specifically to the discussion of the mind,
   this tends to translate into attempts to grasp the concepts of thought
   and perceptual experience in some direct sense that does not involve
   the analysis of linguistic forms.

   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.

   In modern times, the two main schools that have developed in response
   or opposition to this Hegelian tradition are Phenomenology and
   Existentialism. Phenomenology, founded by Edmund Husserl, focuses on
   the contents of the human mind (see noema) and how phenomenological
   processes shape our experiences. Existentialism, a school of thought
   led by Jean-Paul Sartre, focuses on the content of experiences and how
   the mind deals with such experiences.

   An important, though not very well known, example of a philosopher of
   mind and cognitive scientist who tries to synthesize ideas from both
   traditions is Ron McClamrock. Borrowing from Herbert Simon and also
   influenced by the ideas of existential phenomenologists such as Maurice
   Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger, McClamrock suggests that man's
   condition of being-in-the-world ("Dasein", "In-der-welt-sein") makes it
   impossible for him to understand himself by abstracting away from it
   and examining it as if it were a detached experimental object of which
   he himself is not an integral part.

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: free will and the self.

Free will

   In the context of the philosophy of mind, the question about the
   freedom of the will takes on a renewed intensity. This is certainly the
   case, at least, for materialistic determinists. According to this
   position, natural laws completely determine the course of the material
   world. Mental states, and therefore the will as well, would be material
   states which means human behaviour and decisions would be completely
   determined by natural laws. Some take this argumentation a step
   further: people cannot determine by themselves what they want and what
   they do. Consequently, they are not free.
   Immanuel Kant rejected determinism and defended free will
   Enlarge
   Immanuel Kant rejected determinism and defended free will

   This argumentation is rejected, on the one hand, by the compatibilists.
   Those who adopt this position suggest that the question "Are we free?"
   can only be answered once we have determined what the term "free"
   means. The opposite of "free" is not "caused" but "compelled" or
   "coerced". It is not appropriate to identify freedom with
   indetermination. A free act is one where the agent could have done
   otherwise if she had chosen otherwise. In this sense a person can be
   free even though determinism is true. The most important compatibilist
   in the history of the philosophy was David Hume. Nowadays, this
   position is defended, for example, by Daniel Dennett.

   On the other hand, there are also many incompatibilists who reject the
   argument because they believe that the will is free in a stronger sense
   called originationism. These philosophers affirm that the course of the
   world is not completely determined by natural laws: the will at least
   does not have to be and, therefore, it is potentially free. The most
   prominent incompatibilist in the history of philosophy was Immanuel
   Kant. Critics of this position accuse the incompatibilists of using an
   incoherent concept of freedom. They argue as follows: if our will is
   not determined by anything, then we desire what we desire by pure
   chance. And if what we desire is purely accidental, we are not free. So
   if our will is not determined by anything, we are not free.

The self

   The philosophy of mind also has important consequences for the concept
   of self. If by "self" or "I" one refers to an essential, immutable
   nucleus of the person, most modern philosophers of mind will affirm
   that no such thing exists. The idea of a self as an immutable essential
   nucleus derives from the Christian idea of an immaterial soul. Such an
   idea is unacceptable to most contemporary philosophers, due to their
   physicalistic orientations, and due to a general acceptance among
   philosophers of the scepticism of the concept of 'self' by David Hume,
   who could never catch himself doing, thinking or feeling anything.
   However, in the light of empirical results from developmental
   psychology, developmental biology and the neurosciences, the idea of an
   essential inconstant, material nucleus - an integrated representational
   system distributed over changing patterns of synaptic connections -
   seems reasonable.

   In view of this problem, some philosophers affirm that we should
   abandon the idea of a self. For example, Thomas Metzinger and Susan
   Blackmore both practice meditation, claiming that this gives us
   reliable conscious experience of selflessness. Philosophers and
   scientists holding this view frequently talk of the self, "I", agency
   and related concepts as 'illusory', a view with parallels in some
   Eastern religious traditions, such as anatta in Buddhism. But this is a
   minority position. More common is the view that we should redefine the
   concept: by "self" we would not be referring to some immutable and
   essential nucleus, but to something that is in permanent change. A
   contemporary defender of this position is Daniel Dennett.

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