Quote:
Originally Posted by newtus
i hope to be like you with words one day. i really do.
but no my book does go into "epiphenomenalism".
idk what that is. so no.
my book goes a few paragraphs very very very briefly into the materialist view. the dualist view. the mind/body identity theory. behaviorist view. the functionalist view. eliminative materialism. new dualism. and then it goes into the self and thats it. its very very very brief. with a few paragraphs for each theory. it only adds up to maybe 5 pages total for all those theories really.
it sucks but this is philosophy 101. so maybe thats why?
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You're book is thick though. So it can be good to get an over all feel for the problems in philosophy.
Epiphenomalism is the view that we, machines, are made of material matter that moves much like a train, and consciousness is the steam that is created by that train. Epi means "to rise above" and many materialsts believe that consciousness arises from material things. It's a weird belief because it's dualism in disguise, because what is this steam made out of, what is this mind made of? Essentially it's saying, look we have material matter that we're composed up, and this immaterial stuff arises from matter, therefore it's matter bottom up. Weird!
Behaviorism is all about objectivity, and objectivity can be viewed with the eyes, therefore if it's viewable it matter. It only objectively studies what physical behavior occurs. It doesn't account for a mental reason why one has behaved in this or that way-- only that it occurred in such a matter. Psychology is moving away from behaviorism into a more complete umbrella, including cognitive science and also taking in to account social and psycho environments and thoughts or feelings.
For all behaviorism knows or cares to know is that your head is empty. It takes into account nothing that is mental. You are a materialist thing that behaves in such ways when it encounters this obstacle in front of you.
Eliminative materialism is cray cray. It wan'ts to take away all mental vocabulary like "ouch" or "I'm at awe". All subjective feelings are a result of chemicals in the brain and these words, such as "ouch" should be eliminated because they aren't objective science terms, and if it doesn't fit into this materialistic, scientific, objective, viewpoint then it doesn't exist. Consciousness is an illusion and we should say ouch in scientific terms, such as"C-Fibers are firing to my brain releasing such and such chemicals". This is Paul Churchland's view. Our vocabulary works just fine, and we do have subjective mental states because... I can say I subjectively feel them! Let's not throw a vaccularly that works.
He is essentially saying that science can supply all phenomenon, including delusional mental states. It's trying to box our humanity into science. It's science taken to it's final insane conclusion.
I'm at the library. The self is actually part of the book i'm suppose to be writing right now. I can ggloss over Thesues' ship that John Locke argues. The argument Hume gives. Daniel Robinson, one of my mentors talks about five the five different selves. William James, One of the most prolific psychologists and philsophers believes there are 3 kinds of selves. There is an pure ego, a material self and a spiritual self. The spiritual self being the most intimate of them all. Ill talk later. on the self. Sorry, I gab a lot when it comes to philosophy...