Theseus’ Journey of the Mind
Abstract
The best metaphor of the mind is Theseus’s ship, because the main question about it is whatever thing that is entirely replaced, piece by piece, still remains the same. This paradox describes a difficult problem of the levels of identification of the mind with consciousness and also with its “building blocks” — mental and/or brain states. Some of these states can be studied using introspective philosophical methods like conceptual analysis but some appear only in the empirical scientific research. So the Philosophy of Mind has various branches including those inspired by science. The main opposition in the Philosophy of Mind lies between naturalistic and non-naturalistic theories of Mind. Contemporary naturalism does not necessarily regard physicalist reduction or causality thesis. It rather insists on inaccessibility of part of conscious experience for the first-person perspective. Narrowing Mind only to human states of aware consciousness can be the wrong way to understand its place in the universe. Due to neuroscience nonhuman animals can also possess conscious states, representations and qualia very similar to human ones. The author of the paper considers that Mind is not the last bastion of philosophy because conclusions regarding Mind have ethical implications.
References
Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (2016). Philosophical Thought, 2. [= Cambridge Decla ration on Consciousness 2016]
Churchland, P.S., Sejnowski, T.J. (1990). Neural Representation and Neural Computation. In: Philosophical Perspectives. Vol. 4. Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind, 343—382. [=Churchland 1990] https://doi.org/10.2307/2214198
Churchland, P. (2008). The Impact of Neuroscience on Philosophy. In: Neuron, 60 (Nov. 6), 409—411. [= Churchland 2008] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2008.10.023
Eagleman, D. (2015. The Brain: The Story of You. N. Y.: Pantheon Books. [= Eagleman 2015]
Frith, C. (2007). Making Up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. [= Frith 2007]
Kushnerenko, E.V. (2009). Cognitive Development of the Child in the First Year of Life:
Behavior and Electromagnetic Research Methods. Pavlov, I.U. (Ed.). In: From Neuron to Consciousness. [In Russian]. Saint Peterburg: Saint Peterburg University Press. [= Куш не ренко 2009]
Latour, B. (1983). Give Me a Laboratory and I will Raise the World. Science Observed: In: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science. London; Beverly Hills; Sage, 1983, 141—170. [=Латур 2002]
Maturana, U., Varela, F. (1992). The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understan ding. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc. [= Матурана 2011]
Mlodinow, L. (2012). Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior. N. Y.: Pantheon Books. [= Mlodinow 2012]
Penrose, R. (1994). Shadows of the Mind. A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press. [= Пенроуз 1994]
Platek, S. M., Keenan, J., Shackelford, T.K. (2009). Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience. London, Cambridge: The MIT Press. [= Platek 2009]
Ramachandran, V.S.(2011). The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Guest for What Makes us Human. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company. [= Рамачандран 2012]
Sacks, O. (1985). The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales . New York: Summit Books. [Сакс 2006]
Simon, H.A. (1996). The Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge, London: MIT Press. [= Саймон 2004]
Downloads
-
PDF (Українська)
Downloads: 389
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).