Analysis of the Notion of Consciousness Mulla Sadra's perspective and connectionism

Consciousness is a central problem in philosophy, often divided into phenomenal, access, self-, and monitoring consciousness. Mulla Sadra, associating consciousness with the soul, argues that all types refer to something beyond the material and cannot be reduced to matter, based on his concept of knowledge by presence. In contrast, physicalist theories like connectionism attribute consciousness to matter, claiming it can be explained by artificial neural networks. However, connectionism fails to account for types and characteristics of knowledge, mistakenly equating consciousness with information processing. Mulla Sadra holds that while consciousness involves processing information, information can be processed without consciousness, so the two cannot be equated.

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Abstract

Notion of consciousness is one of the most important problems in the history of philosophy. Because of the difficulty of defining consciousness, some philosophers have divided it into phenomenal consciousness, access consciousness, self-consciousness, and monitoring consciousness. Philosophers who associate consciousness with the soul, such as Mulla Sadra, from which he refers to the knowledge of presence and on that basis, it explains the characteristics of consciousness, all types of consciousness refer to something beyond the material. This, in his view, can not reduce consciousness to matter.This is while the physicalist views, such as the theory of connectivity, attribute consciousness to matter. According to connectors, consciousness can be explained using artificial neural networks. Contrary to its claims, this theory is incapable of explaining the types and characteristics of knowledge. In this theory, the reason that attributes awareness to neural networks is to make awareness equal to the processing of information. While, according to Mulla Sadra, consciousness (understanding of information) involves processing information.But it is also possible to process information without consciousness. According to Mulla Sadra's view, therefore, the relation between consciousness and information processing cannot be equated.