Physicalism and the Philosophy of Mind - Literature review Example

In this regard, the identities of mind and brain that are discovered will be of the same kind to such exemplary a posteriori identities of science as that of temperature is mean kinetic energy, or that of water is H2O.... Joseph Levine even asserted that the identities of mind and brain strike quite differently from the apparently corresponding scientific identities (Levine 1983).... John Levine introduced the explanatory gap for the difficulty that the mind theories of physicalists have in explaining the physical properties in giving rise to the way things experienced when they are felt....

This paper attempts to evaluate the responses made by Dretske as pertains to Chisholm's claims and determine their success.... The response given by Dretske to Chisholm account postulating that intentionality is naturalized in all the world due to its intentional context is found to be valid.... nbsp; … It is found that Dretske's response to Chisholm that all intentional states tend to have a purely physical cause is generally found to be invalid mainly because it is seen to not take into consideration the aspect of mental states that can essentially be classified as being intentional and have causal roles....

Ayer was not interested to emphasize about the mind dependence or mind independence of any entity.... He emphasized the conception of sense-data as mind dependent.... As Austin quotes it - “One of the most important things to grasp is that these two terms, ‘sense-data' and ‘material things', live by taking in each other's washing – what is spurious is not one term of the pair but the antithesis itself....

The need to know the working of mind becomes all the more important because of the fact that all our intentional and non-intentional decisions and emotive expressions have a definite voluntary and involuntary actions associated with them.... hellip; The huge implications of technology in human life is because the human mind recognises the reality of mental causation.... The cognitive theory defines the brain and the mind as two independent entities that work in tandem to produce actions and reactions of man, to an event....

This discussion talks that Physicalism, the philosophy built upon the premise that life, as we know it, centers upon or supervenes on physical matter.... Physicalism, the philosophy built upon the premise that life, as we know it, centers upon or supervenes on physical matter.... physicalism and Qualia.... Alter(2005) uses Descartes' argument, that phenomenal consciousness is not physical due to the fact that one can conceive of the body as well as the mind independently of each other, therefore, phenomenal consciousness is neither functional nor physical, to prove that we have a fully conscious mind and a fully present body....

From the proponents of dualism, it follows, therefore, that mind is not capable of existing without matter and awareness cannot occur from mere matter.... The paper "A Psychological or Philosophical Account of People" gives detailed information about the experiences of the supposedly disembodied person....

The knowledge argument propagates that if indeed Mary evidently learned something new when she experienced color, then the theory of physicalism is a fallacy.... The paper "The Nature of the Immediate Environment" focuses on Jackson's knowledge argument.... The fact that no slugs have ever succeeded to spell out in absolute terms how the mysterious remnants feature in the sophisticated view that is evident in their sciences and the way their world operates....

The paper "Different Views On The physicalism and Features Of Them" discusses Lewis' and Jackson's arguments about physicalism.... The writer states that Jackson's argument is stronger since it is only one-sided, while that of Jackson addresses the two sides, physicalism and knowledge argument.... If this was the case with Mary, then the physicalism threats would not be there.... n the other hand, Mary lacked knowledge of physicalism, which is also against the knowledge argument....