Dualism vs. Materialism Churchland evaluates dualism in Matter and Consciousness. In evaluating dualism, he finds several key problems. Dualism is the theory that two things exist in the world: the mind and the physical world. This means that humans are made of two things, the mind and the body. Firstly, there are a lot of blanks and unknown answers when contemplating dualism.
Meanwhile, McCloskey believes that the only conclusion we can reach is that something caused the universe to exist. From reading his article, I feel that he does not formulate a valid argument as to how the power exists or how it created the universe. He goes onto to describe any creator that could exist is either a powerful being or a muddler and is not a god, but an evil spirit or a being that had very disastrous consequences due to their limitations ( McCloskey, pg.64). McCloskey closes his argument of the cosmological argument by stating that belief in either is not a source of strength or security ( McCloskey,
The prisoner slowly sees that what he thought was the real thing was nothing but an illusion of reality. The same idea exists in Bacons The Four Idols; he thought that the idea that reality is based on things, belief, misuse of words, and theories was absurd. He thought the use of a more scientific method should be used to prove things. There are still situations today that are similar to the ones that
Or are they criticizing dualism because they misunderstand it? In this essay, philosopher Colin McGinn’s “ghost argument”, which is against dualism in his famous book The Mysterious Flame, is used as an example to show how people misunderstand dualism. In The Mysterious Flame, McGinn begins by rejecting both traditional materialism and dualism. He faults the materialism for simply equating conscious experience to brain activities. We cannot get the knowledge of a person’s conscious experience through the study of his brain waves; neither will endless introspection tell us anything on the brain anatomy or the neurons.
The effect of the tone in The Stranger shows you how unexciting Meursault’s life is. Unlike The Stranger, the effect of The House of Spirits shows you how complex the characters lives are. Also The Stranger uses a fictional story to explore a specific philosophy: existentialism while The House of Spirits explores the philosophy of realism. In the novel The Stranger, the tone appears to be very bland. The tone shows you how much Meursault doesn’t care about what happens in his life or the decisions he makes.
Leanne McCallum 200803953 In “Descartes’ Evil Genius”, O.K. Bouwsma attempts to argue that Cartesian scepticism is incoherent; he does this by constructing his argument through the telling of stories to explain what Descartes was trying to argue, and where he thinks Descartes was wrong. Descartes had three main arguments that he uses to refute the reliability of our senses; firstly the argument from the fallibility of the senses, secondly, the argument from dreams, and lastly, the Evil Genius argument. Bouwsma analysed the ordinary use of language to show the linguistic problems with this philosophical question. He has two “adventures” in which he explains how the sceptical challenge is incoherent.
Jessica Moore December 4th, 2013 Metaphysics Paper 2 Do the Phenomenological Features of Experience Make Physicalism False? A Defense of Nagel A major area of contention within the realms of the philosophic world is how to accurately depict the relationship between mind and body. Physicalism attempts to answer this question through the view that the universe, including all that seems mental, is entirely physical. However, according to dualist philosophers, such as Thomas Nagel and Frank Jackson, a primary obstacle for the physicalist is the apparent contrast between the intrinsic natures of our experiences and of the brains states with which they are allegedly identical. While both Nagel and Jackson propose that the nature of the mental makes it such that it cannot be explained solely through the physicalist perspective, they reach very different conclusions.
Plato’s view of Knowledge In his dialogue “What is Knowledge” from The Meno, Plato’s main goal is to distinguish between true opinion and actual knowledge. These are two concepts that are very close to each other but are very different also. By exploring Plato’s works, this paper will discuss how true opinion and knowledge can be equally good, but why one should prefer knowledge to true opinion when true opinion will also get similar results. In addition, this paper will also discuss Plato’s theory on how knowledge is different than true opinion in the sense that it requires an extra step to become knowledge from merely a true opinion, and how this theory is connected with Daedalus and his statues of the running man. In “The Meno” the character of Socrates mentions, “correct opinion is no less useful than knowledge” (pg.
Plato Allegory of the Cave- Connections #6 The “Allegory of the Cave” describes how people are unable to adapt, change, and grow both intellectually and ethically; that includes us individually and as a society. People are trapped by their inability to accept change whenever they are presented with the scenario that what they perceive is false, and that what they thought they know, is also false. They think that what they perceive is actual reality and that they cannot think beyond the traps of their own mind because accepting what they believe is wrong would call for change, growth, and ultimately acceptance of what they believe is and was inherently wrong. When the prisoner escapes this leads him to truly understand the mental traps that were set forth upon him and he begins to understand that goodness isn’t just in the visual concepts of the sun, trees, or air. He understands that the goodness he gained was from his ability to change and adept his views and truly not rely on just the simple objects of reality around him.
Watson argued that results based on anything other than visual observation could not possibly be accurate, and therefore could not be replicated in the future (Goodwin, 2007). He argued that the idea of perception was purely subjective, and only his brand of observable data could be relied on for future reference. Watson was a man of unshakable conviction. In addition, some of his experiments were looked upon unfavorably; but his brand of behaviorism was one that helped build a strong foundation for behavioral psychology. According to Watson, no research could be considered valid if the introspective method of validating behavior was used.