Probably the most significant area of contemporary philosophy is looking at the philosophy of mind. the
Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind tell us that the philsophy of mind is:
Quote:
| The branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature of mental phenomena in general and the role of consciousness, sensation, perception, concepts, action, reasoning, intention, belief, memory, etc. in particular. Standard problems include those of free will, personal identity, mind-body problem, other minds, computationalism, etc. |
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The philosophy of mind is basically about the nature of the human person -- the standard problems are very important questions about what makes us human (or inhuman). It is a part of the interdisciplinary effort known as cognitive science -- which incorporates philosophy of mind with cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, neuro-sciences and bits and pieces from most of the other behavioural sciences. Notions of philosophy of mind have been constant themes in most major philosophical systems right back to Socrates (well, everything goes back to Socrates). One of my favourite Socratic dialogues talks about man being in a cave, and rather than perceiving reality directly, all we see are shadows cast on the wall. This hits at the role of perception and our ability to apprehend reality (of course, Socrates puts is far better than I have). Other highlights were Kant's magnum opus, which really centred around the philosophy of mind (a topic which more than any other tracks the development of Kant's thinking over his career).
One of the central debates over the last 20 years is the mind-body problem. The mind body problem is usually traced to Descarte, although it really goes back to a disagreement between Plato and Aristotle. The relationship between the mind and the body has always been problematic. There are essentially two answers.
The dualist view is that the body and the mind are seperate (this was Descarte's basic contribution; and Plato's view; it can be found in most philosophical systems, such as Hume, Kant, Heidegger, and Russell). In the dualist view, the mind has no material base. The mind is some how seperate from the body (from matter). The central problem of dualism is explaining how body and mind interact -- what is the relationship between the two. Descartes talks about the body being an automaton controlled by the mind. Kant gives us a very nice framework of embodied cognition. The main implication of this view is that understanding the brain may not be sufficient to understand the mind.
The materialist view argues that there is nothing beyond the physical world (it is a metaphysical position; not merely epistemological). This was really established by Aristotle, and continued by most of the contemporary philosophers of mind: Searle, Churchland, Rorty, Putnam, Fodor et al). Cartesian materialism means that material means spatial -- ie exists in three dimensional space. There are some problems with this view (which end up on a circular argument). There are different species of materialism, but they all tend to argue that mind (specifically, consciousness) has a material base. The core problem is the explanation of consciousness. They have on their side the a pretty heavy weight of neurological evidence, but still haven't cracked the problem of consciousness (there are some pretty good efforts: Searle, for example).
One of the issues that I want to raise is that popular belief tends towards a dualist view (the consciousness and mind are not fully reducable to the brain); philosophical belief tends towards materialism. But the philosophical notion of materialism has been largely unable to empirically address the critical issues of consciousness -- most obviously in the field of AI.