14 papers in the library · 74 citations · publishing 1953-2026
Philosophy 2026 János Laki
Abstract Historians of philosophy widely concur that Galileo Galilei (re)introduced the metaphysical dichotomy of primary and secondary properties into philosophical discourse. However, his conceptual distinction appeared muddled, resulting in frequent misinterpretations or disregard over time. This paper aims to demonstrate that the apparent vagueness of the dichotomy stems from a common...
Philosophy July 1, 2014 Tyler Burge 25 citations
AbstractWhat are the earliest beings that have minds in evolutionary order? Two marks of mind are consciousness and representation. I focus on representation. I distinguish a psychologically distinctive notion of representation from a family of notions, often called ‘representation’, that invoke information, causation, and/or function. The psychologically distinctive notion implies that a...
Philosophy October 1, 2013 Patrick Lewtas 13 citations
AbstractMost definitions of radical emergentism characterize it epistemologically. This leads to misunderstandings and makes it hard to assess the doctrine's metaphysical worth. This paper puts forward purely metaphysical characterizations of emergentism and property emergence. It explores the nature of the necessitation relation between base and emergent and argues that emergentism entails a...
Philosophy October 1, 2009 Vincent Hope
AbstractThe philosophy of perception currently considers how perception relates to action. Some distinctions may help, distinguishing object perception from perceptual recognition, and both from that-perception. Examples are seeing a man, recognising a man, and seeing that there is a man. Perceiving an object controls self-location by its recognising an object, which depends on memory of how it...
Philosophy October 1, 2000 Andrea Christofidou
It is accepted that first-person thoughts are immune to error through misidentification. I argue that there is also immunity to error through misascription, failure to recognise which has resulted in mistaken claims that first-person thoughts involving the self-ascription of bodily states are, at best, circumstantially immune to error through misidentification relative to ‘I’ and, at worst,...
Philosophy 2000 Nicholas Maxwell
An important part of the mind–brain problem arises because consciousness seems inherently resistant to scientific explanation. The solution to this dilemma is to recognize, first, that scientific explanation can only render comprehensible a selected aspect of what there is, and second, that there is a mode of explanation, the personalistic, different from, irreducible to, but as viable as,...
Philosophy July 1, 1999 Grant Gillett
Consciousness and its relation to the unconscious mind have long been debated in philosophy. I develop the thesis that consciousness and its contents reflect the highest elaboration of a set of abilities to respond to the environment realized in more primitive organisms and brain circuits. The contents of the states lesser than consciousness are, however, intrinsically dubious and indeterminate...
Philosophy April 1, 1999 Rom Harré
Nagel has argued that the ‘mind-body’ problem, as traditionally conceived, is insoluble. His challenge to philosophers is to devise a metaphysical scheme that incorporates materialist concepts in describing first person experience and mentalistic concepts in describing third person experience, such that the internal relations between the concepts thereby constructed are necessary. Nagel's own...
Philosophy July 1, 1995 Howard A. Robinson
Objectivity, Simulation and the Unity of Consciousness: current issues in the philosophy of mind ed.Christopher Peacocke Oxford University Press,Proceedings of the British Academy, vol.83,1994, 162 + xxvi, £14.95 - Volume 70 Issue 273
Philosophy October 1, 1986 J. F. M. Hunter
It is a curious thing about the philosophy of mind, that it includes surprisingly little about minds. In an average anthology on the subject, or a book like Ryle's, one finds discussions of thinking, imagining, believing, willing, remembering, and so on, but not of minds. It seems to be assumed that investigating these topics is investigating minds; but whether that is true is not itself made a...
Philosophy April 1, 1978 Kathleen V. Wilkes 36 citations
Commissurotomy surgery has lately attracted considerable philosophical attention. It has seemed to some that the surgical scalpel that bisects the brain bisects consciousness and the mind as well; and that the ordinary concept of a person is thereby most seriously threatened. I shall assess the extent of the threat, arguing that it is overestimated. The argument begins with section III; section...
Philosophy 1977 Gareth B. Matthews
In L. Frank Baum's story, Ozma of Oz, which is a sequel to Baum's much more famous story, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her companion come upon a wound-down mechanical man bearing a label on which are printed the following words:Smith and Tinker'sPatent Double-Action, Extra-Responsive, Thought-CreatingPerfect-TalkingMECHANICAL MANFitted with our Special Clock-Work Attachment Thinks,...
Philosophy April 1, 1976 David Wiggins
Locke defined a person as ‘a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places” ( Essay , II, xxvii, 2). To many who have been excited by the same thought as Locke, continuity of consciousness has seemed to be an integral part of what we mean by a person. The intuitive appeal of the idea that to...
Philosophy October 1, 1953 J. N. Findlay
Sir David Ross, Ladies And Gentlemen: I Have chosen as the topic of this inaugural lecture that of “having in mind,” the manner or manners in which things come before us in consciousness, are present to our thoughts, or are in some way “there for us.” Alternatively, I might say that I want to consider whatever may be involved in saying that we can turn our thoughts in this or that direction,...