Identity: Self/Other 2

Philosophers divided "The Problem" into monist theories and dualist theories.

Monist theories: There is only one kind of stuff in the world, either mental or physical.

Materialists: May fall under this category because they argue that there is only matter. Theories that tie into materialists include the identity theory and functionalism. In these two theories there is no mind or mental force apart from matter.

Dualist theories: There are two kinds of stuff in the world

Epiphenomenalism: The idea that mental states are produced by physical events but physical events have no causal role to play. A problem with this idea is that i conscious experiences have no effect on anything then we should never know or speak about consciousness since this would mean it had had an effect.

Panpsychism: Is a way to avoid the problem. It is the view that the mind is fundamental in the universe, and that all matter has associated mental properties. In some way this means everything in the universe is conscious, but in others everything is essentially mental.

Rene Descartes is known as "the father of philosophy" and derived the theory of Cartesian Dualism. In his eyes, the world consists of "the extended stuff of which physical bodies are made, and the unextended, thinking stuff of which minds are made." His theory is a form on substance dualism, however the problem with substance dualism is how the mind interacts with the body when the two are made of completely different substances. He believed they interacted through the pineal gland in the center of the brain.

Psychology : "First appeared in the 18th century to describe the philosophy of mental life, but it was toward the end of the 19th century that it became a science." Psychology can be defined in several ways. William James in his famous book "The Priniciples of Psychology" (1890) defined psychology as "the Science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena and their conditions". The phenomena for James can be feelings, desires, cognitions, and reasoning which can be summed up by one word consciousness.

William James did not believe in the dualist concepts of a soul and he contended that injury to the brain, drugs (e.g hashish, opium, ecstasy), and alcohol can alter a person's state of mind and put an end to consciousness. With that said, James believed that a certain amount of brain-physiology is included in psychology. James built his idea of psychology on many different fields of research in anatomy,physiology,and psychophysics.

Psychophysics: "Study of the relationship between physical stimuli and reportable sensations-or, you could say, between outer events and inner experience." Examples of Psychophysicists are Ernst Weber (1795-1878) and Gustav Fechner (1801-1887) who studied the relationship between sensation and the intensity of stimulus (e.g physical luminance and perceived brightness, weight and sensations of heaviness, etc...)

The central issue of consciousness is derived from philosophical questions that have been asked for centuries. These questions stir up the simplest of questions to ask, however they are the most difficult to answer.

• "What am I"
• "What is my purpose"

The most prominent question asks "How are the mind and body are connected?"

In the past century, the advances of neuroscience have uncovered many mysteries surrounding how the brain works. However, the mystery of consciousness is still not defined. The idea known as the "vital spirit" (or Élan vital) is irrelevant due to the common understanding of how life is made from DNA. There is no longer any need to ask what life IS. However advanced science has become, no questions of consciousness have been clearly answered.

The inevitable problem of dualism arises no matter how well one learns and studies the functions of the brain. The mind-body conundrum still exists. Although something exists in the physical world, every person has a distinct and unique personal experience with the world. Every person has a subjective experience with the objective world. This conundrum is at the core of the question of consciousness.

1. What is the mind-body problem? Name some traditional solutions to it.

The mind-body problem is the view that "mental" phenomena are "non-physical" (distinct from the body).

The mind-body dichotomy is the starting point of Dualism, "and became conceptualized in the form known to the modern Western world in René Descartes' philosophy, though it also surfaced in Pre-Aristotelian concepts and in Avicennian philosophy.

Our perceptual experiences depend on stimuli which arrive at our various sensory organs from the external world and these stimuli cause changes in our mental states, ultimately causing us to feel a sensation, which may be pleasant or unpleasant. Someone's desire for a slice of pizza, for example, will tend to cause that person to move his or her body in a specific manner and in a specific direction to obtain what he or she wants."

2. Who described the "hard problem" and what is it?

The young Australian philosopher, David Chalmers discovered the hard problem. The hard problem, is the question of how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience. It is an ongoing conundrum that gives rise to the meaning of consciousness itself.

How does the objective world interact with the subjective world? For every physical object one interacts with, there is a completely personal experience with it. Only THAT person will every have that same subjective and ineffable experience. The mind-body connection still remains shrouded in mystery in the world of science.

In addition, the hard problem consists of what it is like to be in that given subjective state for me, you, an animal, or anything perceived as conscious. We do not know this answer and quite frankly may never be able to in the future which is why it leads us to a dead end, hence the hard problem. Chalmers did however believe the hard problems of consciousness could be divided into many "easy" problems (e.g answer scientifically).

Source Page:
https://wiki.eee.uci.edu/index.php/University_Studies_15A:_Consciousness_%28Fall_2009%29
Student research on Susan Blackmore's book, Consciousness