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In this paper we consider an argument that is very influential in the philosophical literature, the argument from causal role against the view that delusions are beliefs. The argument has two premises, that many delusions fail to play belief-roles and that playing belief-roles is necessary for a mental state to be a belief. We assess both premises and suggest that they can be resisted.
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Ambrus Gergely: Tudományos elmefilozófia L’Harmattan Kiadó, Budapest, 2015. 319 old., 3490 Ft
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Self-deception cuts across the behavior of persons, organizations, and states. Self-deception amounts to wearing a weightless mask: While the wearer is unaware of it, spectators usually recognize it. As soon as the wearer becomes conscious of the weightless mask, self-deception ceases to exist. This gives rise to a paradox: How could it ever be possible for the person to succeed in hiding the weightless mask from his or her own conscious self? To solve the paradox, this paper proposes that self-deception involves “two structural choices”: 1) an agent identifies the optimal decision — but the agent may fail (as a result of temptation) to choose it, which gives rise to self-blame; 2) The agent under focus may choose to invent a misleader (a lie) to make the choice appear “as if” it were optimal in order to avoid self-blame. The quest for a blameless choice makes it possible for the person to succeed in hiding the weightless mask from the conscious self. Aside from solving the Self-Deception Paradox, the proposed two-structural choice theory sheds light on three kinds of self-deception: red herring, self-rationalization, and denial.
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Filosofska osnova joge je takozvani sankja-filosofski sistem. Među ortodoksnim — opšteprihvaćenim — indijskim filosofskim sistemima, tri imaju sasvim istaknutu, osnovnu važnost; oni približno obuhvataju suštinsku sadržinu i ostalih sistema. To su: veđanta, sankja i joga. Joga je poseban sistem, ali u svojoj fiiosofskoj utemeljenosti upotrebljava sankjino shvatanje. A sankja je: izlaganje unutrašnje strukture stvorenog, postojećeg sveta, »predračun, nabrajanje« njegovih sastavnih elemenata. Ujedno je ovo i samo značenje reči sankja. Sistem sankja ne ide dalje, samo razlaže i rezimira; bavi se isključivo materijalnim svetom, i zato ne razmatra ono što je van materijalnog sveta. U ovom smislu sistem joge (kao i vedente) prihvata sankjinu sliku, predstavu sveta kao svoju, ali samo kao osnovu za polazište, da bi nakon upoznavanja suštine materijalnog sveta krenuo dalje i svoj pogled uperio na krajnju suštinu. Vedanta već predstavlja neposredno koncipiranje krajnje, najkorenitije spoznaje. Ona je već, tako reći, vrhunsko učenje, izložen rezultat, apstraktno sumiranje moguće spoznaje. I naziv to odaje; vedanta: kraj Veda, odnosno krajnji zaključak, krajnji rezultat. Ona daje i sažeto izlaganje, na kraju Veda, postojećih tajnih učenja, Upanišada.
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Interpunkcija, ionako tsiromašna u našoj grafiji, mogla bi se glatko ukinuti. Ukinuti u pisanju. U čitanju, govorenju, naše pauze, naglasci, ubrzavanje ili usporavamje, intonacija, rutam, ponekad su izražajmiji i isadržajniji od riječd samih. Tekst se sastoji i od riječi, i njihovih modulacdja, i od prazmina među njiima. Riječi kćatkad trpe intonaciju i interpunkciju, neke milujemo i mazimo, druge šibamo i izbacujemo.
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I will argue that accounts of mineness and pre-reflective self-awareness can be helpful to panpsychists in solving the combination problems. A common strategy in answering the subject combination problem in panpsychism is to deflate the subject, eliminating or reducing subjects to experience. Many modern panpsychist theories are deflationist or endorse deflationist accounts of subjects, such as Parfit’s reductionism of personal identity and G. Strawson’s identity view. To see if there can be deflation we need to understand what the subject/self is. One aspect of consciousness left unexplored and unappreciated by panpsychist theories is pre-reflective self-consciousness/self-awareness. Theories of the self, inspired by phenomenology, that are serious about subjectivity, could be of use in arguing against the deflationary reductionism of the experiencing subject. These theories show that there is more to the subject of experience than just its experiences (qualities). Even without arguing for any precise account of the nature of the self, it can be shown what phenomenology of subjective character of consciousness and pre-reflective self-awareness contributes to the combination problem debate.
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Artykuł przedstawia wzajemną przekładalność problemów, jaka zachodzi między teorią funkcjonalną w filozofii umysłu a niektórymi modelami teorii prawdy w języku, na podstawie artkułu Willfrida Sellarsa Truth and „correspondence“. Praca Sellarsa daje możliwość zastanowienia się nad klasycznym modelem korespondencyjnej teorii prawdy, która stanowi klasyczne źródło teorii reprezentacji. Sellars poddaje krytyce klasyczną relację obrazowania, będącą punktem wyjścia do refleksji nad językiem z jednej, a nad umysłem z drugiej strony. Zamierzam zreferować krytyczną rekonstrukcję korespondencyjnej teorii prawdy u Sellarsa. Następnie przedstawię własną propozycję autora, który zastępuje relację obrazowania relacją nazwaną, w myśl Traktatu logicznofilozoficznego.
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In Anaxagoras’ system, cosmic Mind is one, indivisible and immutable and thus cannot be divided into parts, into individual minds residing in living beings. The same Mind is in one living being as it is in another. Also, the soul is an individual entity, one soul in one living being. Mind does manifest itself in a living being, not as the soul, but through the soul. Mind must be constantly present in the individual soul for the soul to be capable of thought. Only in this sense could the soul’s dormant cognitive ability be called an individual mind. However, for man, only this life remains, although man is highest in the hierarchy among existing beings. Mind seems to make man alive and rational so that man can admire its handiwork, the order and harmony of the world. But this is where man’s cosmic role ends.
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In this paper I defend situated approaches of cognition, and the idea that mind, body and external world are inseparable. In the first section, I present some anti–Cartesian approaches of cognition and discuss the intuition they share that there is a constitutive interaction between mind, body and external environment. In the second section, I present the fallacy of the Cartesian theater of the mind and explain its theoretical premises. In the third section, I present a spatial argument against it, and argue that some case studies could give support to the idea of the mind stretching over the boundaries of the skull. In the fourth section, I present a temporal argument, and argue that even in this case the idea of an interaction between our cognitive life and the external world has at least a very strong intuitive palatability.
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This paper presents the author’s attempt to justify the need for understanding the problem of multilevel mind in artificial intelligence systems. Thus, it is assumed that consciousness and the unconscious are not equal in natural mental processes. The human conscious is supposedly a “superstructure” above the unconscious automatic processes. Nevertheless, it is the unconscious that is the basis for the emotional and volitional manifestations of the human psyche and activity. At the same time, the alleged mental activity of Artificial Intelligence may be devoid of the evolutionary characteristics of the human mind. Several scenarios are proposed for the possible development of a “strong” AI through the prism of creation (or evolution) of the machine unconscious. In addition, we propose two opposite approaches regarding the relationship between the unconscious and the conscious.
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In this article I propose, on the basis of the phenomenological description, a new concept called “virtual living body” and I show its significance for studying the intersubjectivity in the virtual realities. The article consists of three parts. Firstly, I conceptualize “virtual living body” as the sphere of the objects of the world which are used by the functional analogy of our living body. This sphere is accurately distinguished from two other spheres: the living body and not instrumentalized objects of the world. Secondly, I show that the virtual living body is a necessary condition for intersubjectivity and intersubjective communication in a virtual reality, analogously like the living body is a necessary condition for intersubjectivity and intersubjective communication in general. Thirdly, I consider, on the basis of this concept, a specific form of intersubjective communication in a virtual reality called “flame war” and compare it to the master-slave dialectic of Hegel.
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In this paper, I evaluate the prospects and limitations of radical enactivism as recently developed by Hutto and Myin (henceforth, “H&M”) (2013, 2017). According to radical enactivism, cognition does not essentially involve content and admits explanations on a semantic level only as far as cognition is scaffolded with social and linguistic practices. I investigate their claims, focusing on H&M’s criticism of the predictive processing account of cognition (dubbed the bootstrap hell argument) and their own account of the emergence of content (the natural origins of content). I argue that H&M fail on two fronts: unsupervised learning can arrive at contentful representations and H&M’s account of the emergence of content assumes an equivalent bootstrapping. My case is illustrated with Skyrms’ evolutionary game-theoretic account of the emergence of content and recent deep learning research on neural language models. These arguments cast a shadow of doubt on whether radical enactivism is philosophically interesting or empirically plausible.
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In contemporary discussions concerning the relation of the mind to the body, two positions are contrasted with each other: physicalism and dualism. Even if these are not the dominant approaches to the mind-body problem, the fact is that most other positions arise as attempts to find a compromise between these two. This article argues that physicalism and dualism have more in common than is usually assumed. Both accept the key intuition motivating Cartesian dualism, i.e. the view that in the ordinary language we can describe physical and psychological reality in such a way that physical description does not imply anything concerning psychological and vice versa. The argument presented in this paper attempts to show that such descriptions are not possible. This means that there is no sense in talking about two distinct realities: physical and mental. It follows that there is no problem of the mind–body relationship, because the body is a living organism that owes its identity to having the powers and abilities that are the basis for talking about the mind. In addition, the approach proposed here solves the problem of other minds.
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The article dwells upon the need for a thorough philosophical and methodological analysis of the nature and functions of the human’s emotional and sensual sphere in order to identify the possibilities of its implementation by means of artificial intelligence. Computers have become part and parcel of our lives, so full-fledged communication requires empowering them to recognize and express emotions. Due to the result of critical analysis, the authors state that implementation, and not simulation, of emotions in any computing system is currently problematic and, to some extent, impossible. The reason for this is connected both with the blurring in the scientific and philosophical literature of the very concept of ‘emotion’, and the subjective and qualitative nature of the person’s experience of reality, the rootedness of their emotional and sensual sphere in the physical, social and cultural being, the unconditional connection of emotions and the internal personal space of the person.
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In his recent book, Daniel Dennett defends a novel account of semantic information in terms of design worth getting (Dennett, 2017). While this is an interesting proposal in itself, my purpose in this commentary is to challenge several of Dennett’s claims. First, he argues that semantic information can be transferred without encoding and storing it. Second, this lack of encoding is what makes semantic information unmeasurable. However, the argument for both these claims, presented by Dennett as an intuition pump, is invalid.
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Marcin Milkowski provides an insightful overview of work on information theories over the years, from Gabor and Shannon to Wolpert and Kolchinski. He accurately summarizes my work, distilling four claims that I made in BBB, and argues that my arguments in favor of the last two of these are invalid. 3. The amount of semantic information carried or contained in any delimited episode or item is also not usefully measurable in units but roughly comparable in local circumstances. 4. Semantic information need not be encoded to be transmitted or saved (Dennett, 2017, p. 128). […]
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This paper analyzes the notion of recollection in Hans Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur’s thought, in the context of time distance as “obstacles” towards understanding the past. Particular attention is paid to the understanding the phenomenon of “Death” as a time gap between the past and the present. In connection with this problem, we find efforts of philosophical hermeneutics on the one hand and historicism on the other. Differences between historicism and hermeneutics can be outlined in relation to the role that memory plays in the process of understanding in Gadamer and Ricoeur. What does Death mean in terms of understanding for history, and what for hermeneutics? How can we understand temporal distance? Is it possible and necessary to overcome it? What is the role of recollection and how does it participate in understanding? – these are some of the main issues that will be addressed in the text. Finally, the task of the text is to offer the meaning and significance of the hermeneutics of recollection in relation to the mentioned questions, through the interaction of the thoughts of the two authors.
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