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Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life is a 1995 book by the philosopher Daniel Dennett, in which the author looks at some of the repercussions of Darwinian theory. The crux of the argument is that, whether or not Darwin's theories are overturned, there is no going back from the dangerous idea that design might not need a designer. Dennett makes this case on the basis that natural selection is a blind process, which is nevertheless sufficiently powerful to explain the evolution of life. Darwin's discovery was that the generation of life worked algorithmically, that processes behind it work in such a way that given these processes the results that they tend toward must be so.
In philosophy, the self is an individual's own being, knowledge, and values, and the relationship between these attributes.
Analytic philosophy is an analysis focused, broad, contemporary movement or tradition within Western philosophy, especially anglophone philosophy. Analytic philosophy is characterized by a clarity of prose; rigor in arguments; and making use of formal logic and mathematics, and, to a lesser degree, the natural sciences. It is further characterized by an interest in language and meaning known as the linguistic turn. It has developed several new branches of philosophy and logic, notably philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, modern predicate logic and mathematical logic.
The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul is a 1981 collection of essays and other texts about the nature of the mind and the self, edited with commentary by philosophers Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett. The texts range from early philosophical and fictional musings on a subject that could seemingly only be examined in the realm of thought, to works from the twentieth century where the nature of the self became a viable topic for scientific study.
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In the philosophy of mind, the explanatory gap is the difficulty that physicalist philosophies have in explaining how physical properties give rise to the way things feel subjectively when they are experienced. It is a term introduced by philosopher Joseph Levine. In the 1983 paper in which he first used the term, he used as an example the sentence, "Pain is the firing of C fibers", pointing out that while it might be valid in a physiological sense, it does not help us to understand how pain feels.
Eliminative materialism is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. It is the idea that the majority of mental states in folk psychology do not exist. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. The argument is that psychological concepts of behavior and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level. Other versions entail the nonexistence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.
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Gilbert Ryle was a British philosopher, principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "ghost in the machine." Some of Ryle's ideas in philosophy of mind have been called behaviourist. In his best-known book, The Concept of Mind (1949), he writes that the "general trend of this book will undoubtedly, and harmlessly, be stigmatised as 'behaviourist'." Having studied the philosophers Bernard Bolzano, Franz Brentano, Alexius Meinong, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger, Ryle suggested that the book instead "could be described as a sustained essay in phenomenology, if you are at home with that label."
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In philosophy of mind, qualia are defined as instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term qualia derives from the Latin neuter plural form (qualia) of the Latin adjective quālis meaning "of what sort" or "of what kind" in relation to a specific instance, such as "what it is like to taste a specific apple — this particular apple now".
Open individualism is a view in the philosophy of self, according to which there exists only one numerically identical subject, who is everyone at all times, in the past, present and future. It is a theoretical solution to the question of personal identity, being contrasted with "Empty individualism", the view that personal identities correspond to a fixed pattern that instantaneously disappears with the passage of time, and "Closed individualism", the common view that personal identities are particular to subjects and yet survive over time.
Personal identity is the unique numerical identity of a person over time. Discussions regarding personal identity typically aim to determine the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same person, persisting through time.
Buddhist thought and Western philosophy include several parallels.
References
- ↑ Elga, Adam (2000-04-01). "Self-locating belief and the Sleeping Beauty problem". Analysis. 60 (2): 143–147. doi:10.1093/analys/60.2.143. ISSN 0003-2638.
- ↑ "Works by Arnold Zuboff". PhilPapers. Retrieved 2019-10-15.
- ↑ Forgas, Joseph P.; Innes, J. Michael (1989). Recent Advances in Social Psychology: An International Perspective. Amsterdam: North Holland. p. 144. ISBN 978-0-444-88519-7.
- ↑ Valentine, Elizabeth R. (2020). "Perception and action in East and West". Philosophy and History of Psychology: Selected Works of Elizabeth Valentine. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-1-000-08294-4.
- ↑ "Arnold Stuart ZUBOFF". Companies House. Archived from the original on 2021-08-15. Retrieved 2021-08-15.
- 1 2 "About". Arnold Zuboff Art. Retrieved 2024-08-05.
- ↑ "1968 June 3". Commencement Programs. University of Connecticut: 25. 1968-06-03.
- ↑ "Zuboff, Arnold Stuart, 1972". Finding Aids - Princeton University. Retrieved 2024-08-05.
- ↑ "Ph.Ds awarded full list" (PDF). Philosophy - Princeton University. Retrieved 2024-08-05.
- ↑ "Full Programme" (PDF). London School of Philosophy. p. 5. Retrieved 2020-06-08.
- ↑ "People". UCL Philosophy. 2020-08-04. Archived from the original on 2020-08-15. Retrieved 2021-10-08.
- ↑ Sypnowich, Christine (2024-07-09). G. A. Cohen: Liberty, Justice and Equality (PDF). John Wiley & Sons. p. 12. ISBN 978-1-5095-2996-4.
