Cambridge University Press eBooks
September 13, 1996
Sydney Shoemaker
28 citations
Some would say that the philosophy of mind without the first-person perspective, or the first-person point of view, is like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Others would say that it is like Hamlet without the King of Denmark, or like Othello without Iago. I say both. I think of myself as a friend of the first-person perspective. Some would say that I am too friendly to it, for I hold views...
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September 13, 1996
Sydney Shoemaker
6 citations
Qualia, if there are such, are properties of sensations and perceptual states, namely the properties that give them their qualitative or phenomenal character – those that determine “what it is like” to have them. I combine the belief that there are qualia with adherence to a materialist and functionalist view of mind, and thus hold a “compatibilist” view that puts me in a crossfire between two...
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September 13, 1996
Sydney Shoemaker
6 citations
Since the 17th century, a central issue in metaphysics and epistemology has concerned the status of what, following John Locke, have come to be called “secondary qualities”: colors, odors, tastes, sounds, warmth and coldness, etc. The problem is posed by the fact that while these qualities are experienced as belonging to objects in our external environment – the apple is experienced as red, the...
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September 13, 1996
Sydney Shoemaker
3 citations
A distinctive feature of recent philosophy of mind has been the repudiation of “Cartesianism.” With one part of this repudiation, namely the rejection of mind-body dualism, I am in complete agreement. But my concern in the present essay is with a different part of it, namely the rejection of the Cartesian conception of the minds epistemic access to itself – as a first approximation, the view...
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September 13, 1996
Theodore R. Schatzki
Philosophers and social theorists once found it unproblematic to conceptualize mind as a distinct and autonomous ontological substratum separate not only from the world, but also from the actions intimately connected with it. The first component of this conception to fall was the autonomy of the fundamental structures and contents of mind from social context. Hegel initiated its decline with...
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August 13, 1996
Sara Rappe
46 citations
Plotinus anticipates Descartes in arguing both that the soul as subject of perception cannot be an extended substance, as well as in arguing that the mind necessarily knows itself. Like Descartes, Plotinus also invokes an introspective or subjective stance within his dialectical procedure. Methodologically, it will be seen, Plotinus shares along with Descartes in a tradition of philosophy of...
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July 13, 1996
John Deigh
17 citations
Descartes, near the beginning of the Meditations, raised and then immediately dismissed the possibility that he was mad. He had embarked on an investigation into the power of reason to discover truths that by virtue of their being indubitable could constitute the foundations of scientific knowledge, and since his plan of investigation was to test his own reasoning powers, taking them to be...
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July 13, 1996
Alberto Melucci
Nomads of the present Ever since its advent, the modern world has offered individual action an open field of possibility. The myths of progress and liberty have fed the Promethean dream of freeing mankind from natural constraints, by submitting nature to the dominion of technological power. Moreover, the promise of freedom has been extended to regard also the life of the individual, for whom it...
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April 18, 1996
Rene Descartes
827 citations
[Dedicatory letter to the Sorbonne] To those most learned and distinguished men, the Dean and Doctors of the sacred Faculty of Theology at Paris, from Rene Descartes. I have a very good reason for offering this book to you, and I am confident that you will have an equally good reason for giving it your protection once you understand the principle behind my undertaking; so much so, that my best...
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April 18, 1996
Rene Descartes
4 citations
It remains for me to examine whether material things exist. And at least I now know they are capable of existing, in so far as they are the subject-matter of pure mathematics, since I perceive them clearly and distinctly. For there is no doubt that God is capable of creating everything that I am capable of perceiving in this manner; and I have never judged that something could not be made by...
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April 18, 1996
Rene Descartes
2 citations
Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that 1 had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the...
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April 18, 1996
Rene Descartes
I will now shut my eyes, stop my ears, and withdraw all my senses. I will eliminate from my thoughts all images of bodily things, or rather, since this is hardly possible, I will regard all such images as vacuous, false and worthless. I will converse with myself and scrutinize myself more deeply; and in this way I will attempt to achieve, little by little, a more intimate knowledge of myself. I...
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April 18, 1996
Rene Descartes
During these past few days I have accustomed myself to leading my mind away from the senses; and I have taken careful note of the fact that there is very little about corporeal things that is truly perceived, whereas much more is known about the human mind, and still more about God. The result is that I now have no difficulty in turning my mind away from imaginable things1 and towards things...
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April 18, 1996
Rene Descartes
There are many matters which remain to be investigated concerning the attributes of God and the nature of myself, or my mind; and perhaps I shall take these up at another time. But now that I have seen what to do and what to avoid in order to reach the truth, the most pressing task seems to be to try to escape from the doubts into which I fell a few days ago, and see whether any certainty can...
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April 18, 1996
Rene Descartes
You conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist , is true whenever it is put forward by you or conceived in your mind. But I do not see that you needed all this apparatus, when on other grounds you were certain, and it was true, that you existed. You could have made the same inference from any one of your other actions, since it is known by the natural light that whatever acts exists. [ Fifth...
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April 18, 1996
Rene Descartes
So serious are the doubts into which I have been thrown as a result of yesterday's meditation that I can neither put them out of my mind nor see any way of resolving them. It feels as if I have fallen unexpectedly into a deep whirlpool which tumbles me around so that I can neither stand on the bottom nor swim up to the top. Nevertheless I will make an effort and once more attempt the same path...
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February 23, 1996
Peter Carruthers
This chapter will set the scene for the remainder of the book, reviewing the desiderata for a theory of consciousness, and setting aside some false starts. After a brief retrospect, I shall begin by explaining and defending the distinction between conscious and non-conscious mental states, before criticising two theories of the nature of this distinction which I regard as being overly simple –...
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February 23, 1996
Peter Carruthers
In this chapter I shall present, elucidate, and defend my own proposal on the nature of consciousness, which I call the reflexive thinking (RT) theory . This theory will then be put to work in the chapter which follows, where I shall argue that human conscious thinking, at least, essentially involves public language. Since I claim that RT theory provides a better framework for considering the...
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February 23, 1996
Peter Carruthers
In the present chapter I shall outline, and criticise in turn, a number of higher-order thought theories of consciousness, due to David Armstrong, David Rosenthal, Daniel Dennett, and others. Elements of these theories will then be incorporated into my own reflexive thinking theory, to be presented in the next chapter. Remember that one important strategic aim of this discussion is to see...
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January 26, 1996
Graham Oppy
A simple version of an experiential ontological argument is the following: The word ‘God’ is not susceptible of an explicit definition but is a term whose meaning can only be had on the basis of religious experience. (Premise) A body of experience adequate as a basis for an understanding of this term must also be adequate as an evidential basis for assent to the proposition that God exists....
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July 28, 1995
Frederick A. Olafson
The approach to the philosophy of mind that has been adopted in this book does not attempt to demarcate a special domain of mental phenomena. Instead, the fact of presence – the “There is … ” – in its several dimensions has set the agenda for this inquiry, and the progressive differentiation of the concept of what there is – that is, of the world – has replaced the analysis of states of mind...
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July 28, 1995
Frederick A. Olafson
The importance of the decision one makes about where an inquiry is to begin can hardly be overestimated. That decision sets the character of the questions to be addressed; and by laying down the terms in which they are formulated, it can even carry an implicit commitment to a certain kind of answer to those questions. In the philosophy of mind especially, the terminology traditionally used to...
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May 26, 1995
David Woodruff Smith
35 citations
THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM IN HUSSERL Husserl is often read as an idealist, more like Kant than Berkeley, or else as a dualist, with epistemological motivations like those of Descartes. It would be only fitting for Husserl then to set aside the physical world and study pure consciousness. Phenomenology, the science of consciousness, would become the whole of philosophy. However, when we look closely...
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February 16, 1995
Susan J. Rasmussen
Spirits of solitude bring illnesses of the heart and soul. In song verses used in spirit possession rituals, one who is possessed is referred to obliquely through the metaphor of an orphan ( golama ), a term also used to refer to a childless camel, and a female camel who has lost her young. Asalama, the blacksmith woman whose ritual served as a prelude to my quest for understanding possession,...
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February 16, 1995
Susan J. Rasmussen
There are numerous elements of reversal, or symbolic inversions, during the possession ritual that are apparent in the singing, dance motions, and ritual paraphernalia of the event. Possession songs begin only after sunset, when restrictions on behavior are relaxed, and when patients usually emerge from their tents (or, more rarely, are brought to the curing site away from their compound)....