Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia
December 31, 2021
Riccardo Manzotti
1 citation
In this paper I approach the problem of the boundaries and location of consciousness in a strictly physicalist way. I start with the debate on extended cognition, pointing to two unresolved issues: the ontological status of cognition and the fallacy of the center. I then propose using identity to single out the physical basis of consciousness. As a tentative solution, I consider Mind-Object...
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences
December 30, 2021
Michael Pauen
One of the reasons why the Neural Correlates of Consciousness Program could appear attractive in the 1990s was that it seemed to disentangle theoretical and empirical problems. Theoretical disagreements could thus be sidestepped in order to focus on empirical research regarding the neural substrate of consciousness. One of the further consequences of this dissociation of empirical and...
Comparative Philosophy An International Journal of Constructive Engagement of Distinct Approaches toward World Philosophy
December 30, 2021
Robbert Zandbergen
2 citations
In the present work I study Daoist philosophy in conjunction with the radical new philosophy of antinatalism, spearheaded by South African philosopher David Benatar. Although I am not claiming equivalence between the two, a meaningful communication emerges between the classical Chinese sources used here and the modern doctrine of antinatalism. I argue that both visions partake in a radical...
Religions
December 29, 2021
D. A. Winters
From where can we draw inspiration to cultivate an intimate sensibility into the spiritual nature of landscape, the foundation for designing gardens for meditation and healing? Through various spiritual lenses, this inquiry penetrates fundamental grounds for our subtle relationship with landscape. Beginning with excerpts of a private audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama at Middlebury...
Religion & Literature
December 29, 2021
Michael J. Sanders
Abstract:This article argues for the centrality of Buddhism in Thomas Pynchon’s fiction. The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, and Bleeding Edge make a Buddhist Trilogy. As the only three Pynchon novels to have female protagonists, each novel features a motherly protagonist that has a Buddhist reference in her name. Beneath the patina of Judeo-Christian, psychological, scientific, and political...
Studia Philosophica Wratislaviensia
December 28, 2021
Sławomir Barć
The text compares two themes: Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological reduction, and the category of „empty mind” in Zen Buddhism. The similarities and the difference between the two epistemological strategies are shown and the common ground for metaphysical and partly ethical solutions are outlined. The basic thesis is that different cognitive strategies can lead to very similar effects. In other...
arXiv Preprint Archive
December 28, 2021
John Realpe-Gómez
preprint
Evidence is growing for the theory of embodied cognition, which posits that action and perception co-determine each other, forming an action-perception loop. This suggests that we humans somehow participate in what we perceive. So, how can scientists escape the action-perception loop to obtain an observer-independent description of the world? Here we present a set of conjectures informed by the...
arXiv Preprint Archive
December 24, 2021
Michael Levin
8 citations
preprint
Synthetic biology and bioengineering provide the opportunity to create novel embodied cognitive systems (otherwise known as minds) in a very wide variety of chimeric architectures combining evolved and designed material and software. These advances are disrupting familiar concepts in the philosophy of mind, and require new ways of thinking about and comparing truly diverse intelligences, whose...
Armstrong's Materialist Theory of Mind
December 23, 2021
D. M. Armstrong
This chapter presents Armstrong’s last paper on philosophy of mind, where he recounts the origins of David Lewis’s seminal paper ‘An Argument for the Identity Theory’ which appeared in 1966, two years before Armstrong’s book. Armstrong situates Lewis’s theory in relation to his own theory and in so doing adds an important seam to the familiar narrative of how the causal theory of mind emerged...
Armstrong's Materialist Theory of Mind
December 23, 2021
Daniel Stoljar
This chapter argues that there is a fascinating tension between Armstrong’s perceptual or self-scanning model of introspection, and his account of the function of consciousness. The account of the function of consciousness is roughly that consciousness is necessary for purposive thought: in order to think things through, we must keep track of and be aware of our various thoughts. Thus,...