Philosophy of Mind, Miscellaneous

This article describes four arguments presented Gilbert Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind to argue that the concept of “mind” is a product of the false belief that there is a ghost in the machine, and this ambiguity is analyzed, it causes words as “will” take meaning in ordinary language. Besides the analysis of the arguments, we offer an answer to each of them and, finally, the idea that mind and will form part of the body and have (...) an ontological support, although not possessing a separate existence from the same holding. (shrink)

Keith Donnellan of UCLA is one of the founding fathers of contemporary philosophy of language, along with David Kaplan and Saul Kripke. Donnellan was and is an extremely creative thinker whose insights reached into metaphysics, action theory, the history of philosophy, and of course the philosophy of mind and language. This volume collects the best critical essays on Donnellan's forty-year body of work. The pieces by such noted philosophers as Tyler Burge, David Kaplan, and John Perry, discuss Donnellan's various insights (...) particularly offering new readings of his views on language and mind. (shrink)

This book is about the concept of intelligence which derives virtually all of its significance from an occurrence use of mental conduct adverbs. The Concept of Intelligence provides an episodic rather than a dispositional analysis, while at the same time, agreeing that intelligence has 'outer criteria' of meaning. It reinforces the 'nature' as opposed to the 'nurture' side of the popular debate on intelligence by showing what the concept signifies in ordinary language, and so, dovetails with the controversial 'The Bell (...) Curve.'. (shrink)

This project focuses on the Psychology of Transformation and is presented in two parts, along with a statement of contextual inquiry. The statement of contextual inquiry includes a theoretical and contextual discussion of psychology of transformation, shamanic techniques and shamanism, transformationalism and group process. Part one is a creative narrative in the form of vignettes that are designed to aid the reader in experiential awareness of the subjects covered. Beginning with a personal description of the author's transformational experiences on shamanic (...) journeys to Peru it leads into a description of experiences in the group that was designed to break the cultural trance of the illusion of separation in the United States. The hypothesis was that group visioning could be a potent factor in effecting the experience of oneness or unity. The group design is based on shamanic concepts and techniques. In the process of letting go of many things the six members joined in a process of becoming and forming a tribe, a living organism with a life of its own. The life of the group was marked by four rites of passage: Birth, Puberty, Marriage, Death. The second part of the PDE is a documentary describing group formation and design, various techniques were employed to create sacred space, community and heart connection, to share consciousness, to heighten and expand experiential awareness, to connect with nature, to enter non-ordinary reality, to practice shamanic journeying and environment personal transformation was triggered, inspired, supported and nurtured. Each member worked on aspects of development for their own lives. There were no rules or procedures but ritual and visioning were important vehicles for the unfoldment of each individual's transformational process. The personal accounts of members of the group are documented in the form of interviews. This phenomenological study indicates this group process to be a viable means for personal and social transformation. (shrink)

The extraordinary parallel between the psychological theory of reversals (Apter, 1982) and the anthropological theory of anti-structure (Turner, 1982)-- both derived independently and almost simultaneously from entirely different kinds of evidence and research-- would seem to point to something profound and universal in human experience which has been curiously neglected in the behavioural sciences and entirely ignored in consciousness studies. What I will do here is to introduce reversal theory, show how it applies to ritual, and then compare it with (...) Victor Turner's well-known approach to the very same topic. Reversal theory has in fact been used to elucidate many diverse social phenomena, for example criminal violence, military combat, sexual behaviour, family relationships, soccer hooliganism, organizational culture, leadership, team sports, social advocacy and classroom management (see review in Apter, 2001a). The present paper extends these ideas to ritual for the first time, and makes reference especially to the work of Turner and his idea of cultural inversions (Turner, 1969). Reversal theory is also about inversions, but the inversions in this case (i.e. reversals) occur at the level of individual psychology and are identified initially as experiential rather than behavioural or social. This paper will explore the relationship between these two kinds of reversal, psychological and anthropological. (shrink)

Over 35 years, Daniel Dennett has articulated a rich and expansive philosophical outlook. There have been elaborations, refinements, and changes of mind, exposi- tory and substantive. This makes him hard to pin down. Does he, for example, think intentional states are real? In places, he sounds distinctly instrumentalist; elsewhere, he avows realism, ‘sort of’. What is needed is a map, charting developments and tracing dialectical threads through his extensive writings and the different regions of his thought. This is what Matthew (...) Elton’s impressive book supplies. Accessibly written, with a useful glossary and detailed guides to the literature, it will be ex- tremely helpful to students and professionals alike. (shrink)

The smartphone can be considered a great example of how technology provides us with information at our fingertips anytime, anywhere. However, we have been operating mostly in the dark without a clear understanding of what our mobile devices have to offer and how people arrive at creative re-use as part of a problem-solving activity. This paper is an attempt to reach a better understanding of the conditions in which creative re-use of smartphones may take place. Our main goal is to (...) theoretically explore the role that the context of one’s activity may have in supporting creative re-use. We argue that the smartphone in itself cannot be separated from its cognitive ecology, but it is precisely the way in which it becomes permeable in the context that affords us to potentially come up with new uses and in doing so improve our ability to solve problems. (shrink)

In this paper, through external and internal observation (introspection), it is shown that the human mind (or spirit) can be defined as an evolving, conscious, triadic entity consisting of unitary-multiple components - intellect, sensitiveness, and power - which in turn are made of multiple ideas, sentiments, and actions, respectively. The three mind components are interdependent, each needing the support of the other two for its activity. This interdependence, which is linked to the problem of mind-body relationship, is explained by the (...) observational fact that no physical object can exist if not under particular patterns of forms/structures and associated movements/functions, patterns which are non-physical and represent the “activities” of that object. Conversely, no activity can exist if not associated to a structured and functioning physical object. “Intellect” and “sensitiveness” are regarded as the activities that necessarily arise from the extremely complex structure and physical functions of the brain and other body apparatuses (“power”). Mind can exert outwardly oriented activities, directed to external objects, or inwardly oriented activities, directed to mind itself. The latter activities give the awareness that mind is capable of undergoing evolution, i.e.,development of intellect, sensitiveness and actions. Evolution enables the mind to continuously transcend itself, and could be regarded as the source of “moral values”. Inward mind activity gives rise to moral thoughts, moral feelings and moral acts (counterpart of ideas, sentiments, and actions, produced by the outward mind activity). This conception of mind opens new perspectives in such diverse fields as ontology (the triadic nature might be extensible to all existing objects), ethics (identification of the “good” with the mind-evolution itself), and still others. (shrink)

This book represents a unique attempt to restore a 'new-classical' aspiration towards a philosophical system able to provide some certainties. Using the distinctive feature of presenting an original and complete philosophical system, author Francesco Belfiore diverges from the philosophical literature of the last decades, which has been ever more focused upon specific fields.

This paper focuses on the research field of machine ethics and how it relates to a technological singularity—a hypothesized, futuristic event where artificial machines will have greater-than-human-level intelligence. One problem related to the singularity centers on the issue of whether human values and norms would survive such an event. To somehow ensure this, a number of artificial intelligence researchers have opted to focus on the development of artificial moral agents, which refers to machines capable of moral reasoning, judgment, and decision-making. (...) To date, different frameworks on how to arrive at these agents have been put forward. However, there seems to be no hard consensus as to which framework would likely yield a positive result. With the body of work that they have contributed in the study of moral agency, philosophers may contribute to the growing literature on artificial moral agency. While doing so, they could also think about how the said concept could affect other important philosophical concepts. (shrink)

This document discusses a few versatile, tool-like crowd performance algorithms necessary for humans to employ internet technologies to make better decisions collectively. This document also readily acknowledges that true collective intelligence approaches are foremost about organizational culture change and encouraging shared group norms (i.e., values) of sharing, openness, transparency, and collaboration. Humans will need to buy-in to the approaches and technology tools for any collective intelligence approach to work. The scope of this document has two sections: The first section dives (...) into some of the known theory and empirical evidence supporting a case that collective intelligence does, in fact, lead to better decision outcomes - specifically that collective intelligence employing recent advances in internet technologies can provide greater advantages than traditional organizational methods of making decisions. The second section takes these underpinnings and then extends them to consider a tool and associated crowd performance algorithms that could be coupled into a packaged generic system that serves as a staging ground for an organization to launch collective intelligence efforts. This discussion considers how different features would be aligned with desired human and organizational factors, as well as what outcomes could be expected from such a generic system approach. (shrink)

This paper gives continuity to the criticism, undertaken in two papers previously published in this journal, of transpersonal systems that fail to discriminate between nirvanic, samsaric, and neithernirvanic-nor-samsaric transpersonal states, and which present the absolute sanity of Awakening as a dualistic, conceptually-tainted condition. It also gives continuity to the denunciation of the false disjunction between ontogenically ascending and descending paths, while showing the truly significant disjunction to be between existentially ascending and metaexistentially descending paths. However, whereas in the preceding paper (...) the focus was on Wilber’s so-called integral system, in this paper the focus of the main body is on the systems of Washburn and Grof. It features an appendix discussing psychedelics and the use of the term entheogens in their regard, and another appendix showing Wilber’s system to give continuity to the Orphic dualism of Pythagoreans, Eleatics, and Plato, and the covert Orphic dualism of Neo-Platonics. (shrink)

The philosophy of mind approaches the epistemological questions that are behind the scientific research on the mind, using the speculative method (with mental experiences) and taking into consideration the results achieved in the empirical research. One of the approached basic problems is the problem mind-brain, about which the theoreticians normally follow one of four perspectives: new mysterianism , reductionism, functionalism and phenomenology.