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Index
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"When you enter your attention on the contents of your consciousness, you do not clearly apprehend a neural network pulsing with electrochemical activity: you apprehend a flux of thoughts, sensations, desires, and emotions. It seems that mental states and properties, as revealed in introspection, could hardly be more different from physical states and properties if they tried."
The question how the human mind functions, has inspired debate and countless theories to explain this strangest of phenomena.
Today, the battlefield of competing theories is spread across several disciplines; philosophy, cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience.
All these fields both contribute and articulate thoughts on consciousness.
As this broad spectrum would require any interested reader to cover quite a large terrain, introductory textbooks exist.
Matter and consciousness is such a book; it aims to provide a broad overview of the disciplines and the contributions they make to theories of mind.
As Churchland notes: "Philosophers usually write their books for other philosophers, and express parenthetical hopes that the book will prove useful to students and lay readers as well.
Such hopes are usually vain."
New readers in the field should not be bothered with irrelevant technical and specialised language. What is important is that main issues are presented and that a new reader will understand what ideologies, points of view, and points of debate establish the forcefields between competing theories.
In order to provide clarity, Churchland structures the book in chapters, each dealing with a specific point of view towards the matter at hand.
This structure results from a series of questions one might ask when confronted with the problems of consciousness:
- what things exist really, and what is their nature? This ontological question deals primarily with the mind-body dualism. Dualists claim that the mind is a special 'thing' quite separate from the body.
Materialists claim that there is nothing but the brain, and all consciousness should be sought there. Churchland identifies nine theories that deal with this question.
In dualism he differentiates between and discusses (beware of the names!) Cartesian dualism, popular dualism, epiphenomenalism, interactionist property dualism, and elemental-property dualism.
In materialism he discusses philosophical behaviorism, reductive materialism (the Identity Theory), functionalism, and eliminative materialism.
Churchland provides references for further introductory reading (as he does in all chapters), and separately discusses existing arguments for and against each current of thought (which he also does in most other chapters). (Chapter 2)
- how does meaning get attached to mental states? This semantical question has two broad currents; association of mental states to meaning, and networks of causal relations between mental states and behaviour. Three main theories exist here:
meaning deriving from an act of inner ostention, meaning deriving from operational definitions, and meaning deriving from a network of laws constituting 'folk psychology'. Churchland introduced the first two and discusses in-depth the last one, presenting arguments pro and contra. (Chapter 3)
- what is knowledge, and where does it come from? This epistemological question can be split in two; do other people have mental states at all, and what is the nature of self-consciousness? The first question is usually explained through three arguments; analogy, behaviorism, and folk psychology.
The second question is dealt with in depth, and the current state of thought is compared to traditional views. (Chapter 4)
- what proper approach to a 'science of the mind'? The methodological problems of this question deal with the nature of evidence, related domains, and connection with established sciences.
Although everybody agrees on the task of science to further knowledge on consciousness, there is disagreement on the intellectual methods that should be employed.
Churchland discusses four methodologies; Idealism and Phenomenology, Methodological Behaviorism, Cognitive/Computational approach, and Methodological Materialism. (Chapter 5)
- what contribution does artificial intelligence make? An introduction to the field, and what conclusions may be drawn from machine-intelligence? Elementary concepts of computers are discussed: hardware and software, and the piecemeal approach towards development.
Problem-solving, learning, vision, and natural language manipulation are introduced. Major problems and the question of self-consciousness provide the conclusion. (Chapter 6)
- what contribution do the neurosciences make? An introduction to the field, and what conclusions may be drawn from its results? The neurosciences have different approaches; the evolutionary approach, neurophysiological, neuropsychological, cognitive neurobiology, and parallel distributed processing. These are all introduced and discussed. (Chapter 7)
- the last chapter discusses rather speculatively the distribution of conscious intelligence in the universe. (Chapter 8)
Churchland's book is written concisely in clear language, aiming to bring central issues powerfully to the front. A lot of approaches exist, and a wealth of different stands, opinions, and arguments pass the reader.
At the moment there is not one theory that is commonly held to be true. Therefore Churchland points out inadequacies of theories and brings to the fore weaknesses. In doing so, a lot of interesting side-issues dealing with the matter or clarifying arguments are also presented to the reader.
Churchland invites the reader to further think through the positions offered, and to choose for himself which one is desirable.
"Matter and Consciousness" is a readable book that will provide a good introduction to anyone starting on the question of human thought and consciousness.
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