Mind, Consciousness, and...

Journal of Philosophy and Culture, 2011

How do our mental states relate to the physical states of our body? Do our mental states arise from the physical processes of our body? Is it really the case that some of our actions are caused by our mental states such as our intentions and desires? Is there a significant difference between a physical state causing another physical state say the cutting of our skin causing the bleeding of our skin, and a mental state causing a physical state say desiring to raise our arm causing the rising of our arm? If we believe that there are such things as mental states that are over and above the physical states of our body then it is important to know how they relate to the physical states of our body. The investigation of the various philosophical issues connected to the relation between mind and body, or between our mental states (and processes) and bodily states (and processes), is the primary concern of what has been called in philosophy as the mind-body problem. The mind-body problem, as can be gleaned from the discussions of philosophers on this problem, has the following two types. The first concerns the ontological (or existential) relation between mind and body, where the inquiry focuses on how the existence of the mental states relates to the existence of bodily states-or the physical states of the body. I shall call this type of mind-body problem as the ontological mind-body problem. The second one, on the other hand, concerns the causal relation between mental states and bodily states, where the inquiry focuses on whether there is a causal relation between these two types of states, and if there is, on what type of causal relation is at work therein. I shall call this type of mind-body problem as the causal mind-body problem. In this essay, I examine the various solutions proposed by philosophers to the mind-body problem both in its ontological and causal form.

Open Journal of Philosophy, 2011

An old philosophical problem, the mind-body problem, has not been yet solved by philosophers or scientists. Even if in cognitive neuroscience has been a stunning development in the last 20 years, the mind-body problem remained unsolved. Even if the majority of researchers in this domain accept the identity theory from an ontological viewpoint, many of them reject this position from an epistemological viewpoint. In this context, I consider that it is quite possible the framework of this problem to be wrong and this is the main reason the problem could not be solved. I offer an alternative, the epistemologically different world's perspective, which replaces the world or the universe. In this new context, the mind-body problem becomes a pseudo-problem.

2019

Three monist views on the mind-body problem are presented. Triple-aspect monism considers that there are three main phases of actualization of the potentialities in Nature: the physical, the informational, and the conscious. The double-face view assumes that conscious mind and brain are irreducible to each other, stressing not only that the conscious mind is dependent on the brain, but that changes in the brain are also dependent on the conscious mind. Qualitative physicalism adopts the mindbrain identity thesis, and defends the view that subjective qualia are actual physical attributes of some region of the brain.

It is ver y difficult, now that everybody is so accustomed to everything, to g ive an idea of the kind of uneasiness felt when one first looked at all these pictures on these walls. . . Now I was confused and I looked and I looked and I was confused.

A recent attempt to describe the mind body problem. This paper discuss the metaphors that lead to the problem and illustrates by example where the problem does not occur.

Synthesis Philosophica, 2008

This paper proposes that the ‘problem of consciousness’, in its most popular formulation, is based upon a misinterpretation of the structure of experience. A contrast between my subjective perspective (A) and the shared world in which I take up that perspective (B) is part of my experience. However, descriptions of experience upon which the problem of consciousness is founded tend to emphasise only the former, remaining strangely oblivious to the fact that experience involves a sense of belonging to a world in which one occupies a contingent subjective perspective. The next step in formulating the problem is to muse over how this abstraction (A) can be integrated into the scientifically described world (C). I argue that the scientifically described world itself takes for granted the experientially constituted sense of a shared reality. Hence the problem of consciousness involves abstracting A from B, denying B and then trying to insert A into C, when C itself presupposes B. The problem in this form is symptomatic of serious phenomenological confusion. No wonder then that consciousness remains a mystery.

Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, 1999