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Revisionary Materialism
Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind that expresses 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.Lycan, W. G. & Pappas, G. (1972) "What is eliminative materialism?" ''Australasian Journal of Philosophy'' 50: 149-59. Other versions entail the nonexistence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.Rey, G. (1983). "A Reason for Doubting the Existence of Consciousness", in R. Davidson, G. Schwartz and D. Shapiro (eds.), ''Consciousness and Self-Regulation Vol 3''. New York, Plenum: 1-39. Eliminativism about a class of entities is the view that the cl ...
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Materialism
Materialism is a form of monism, philosophical monism according to which matter is the fundamental Substance theory, substance in nature, and all things, including mind, mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are caused by physical processes, such as the neurochemistry of the human brain and nervous system, without which they cannot exist. Materialism directly contrasts with monistic idealism, according to which consciousness is the fundamental substance of nature. Materialism is closely related to physicalism—the view that all that exists is ultimately physical. Philosophical physicalism has evolved from materialism with the theories of the physical sciences to incorporate forms of physicality in addition to ordinary matter (e.g. spacetime, energy, physical energies and forces, and exotic matter). Thus, some prefer the term ''physicalism'' to ''materialism'', while others use them as ...
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Paul Churchland
Paul Montgomery Churchland (born October 21, 1942) is a Canadian philosopher known for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh under Wilfrid Sellars (1969), Churchland rose to the rank of full professor at the University of Manitoba before accepting the Valtz Family Endowed Chair in Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and joint appointments in that institution's Institute for Neural Computation and on its Cognitive Science Faculty. As of February 2017, Churchland is recognised as Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, UCSD, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of Moscow State University. Churchland is the husband of philosopher Patricia Churchland, with whom he collaborates closely. Early life and education Paul Montgomery Churchland was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on October 21, 1942. Note, ...
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Jerry Fodor
Jerry Alan Fodor ( ; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modularity of mind and the language of thought hypotheses, and he is recognized as having had "an enormous influence on virtually every portion of the philosophy of mind literature since 1960." At the time of his death in 2017, he held the position of State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Rutgers University, and had taught previously at the City University of New York Graduate Center and MIT. Life and career Jerry Fodor was born in New York City on April 22, 1935, and was of Jewish descent. He received his degree (''summa cum laude'') from Columbia University in 1956, where he wrote a senior thesis on Søren Kierkegaard. and studied with Sidney Morgenbesser and Arthur Danto. He then earned a PhD in philosophy from Princeton Univer ...
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Alvin Goldman
Alvin Ira Goldman (October 1, 1938 – August 4, 2024) was an American philosopher who was emeritus Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a leading figure in epistemology. Education and career Goldman earned his BA from Columbia University and PhD from Princeton University and previously taught at the University of Michigan (1963–1980), the University of Illinois, Chicago (1980–1983) and the University of Arizona (1983–1994). He joined the Rutgers faculty in 1994 and retired in 2018. Goldman was married to the ethicist Holly Martin Smith. He died on August 4, 2024, at the age of 85. Philosophical work Goldman did influential work on a wide range of philosophical topics, but his principal areas of research were epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. Action theory Goldman's early book, ''A Theory of Human Action'' (a revised version of his Ph.D. thesis), presents a systematic way of classif ...
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Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of research in computer science that develops and studies methods and software that enable machines to machine perception, perceive their environment and use machine learning, learning and intelligence to take actions that maximize their chances of achieving defined goals. High-profile applications of AI include advanced web search engines (e.g., Google Search); recommendation systems (used by YouTube, Amazon (company), Amazon, and Netflix); virtual assistants (e.g., Google Assistant, Siri, and Amazon Alexa, Alexa); autonomous vehicles (e.g., Waymo); Generative artificial intelligence, generative and Computational creativity, creative tools (e.g., ChatGPT and AI art); and Superintelligence, superhuman play and analysis in strategy games (e.g., ...
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David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist who was best known for his highly influential system of empiricism, philosophical scepticism and metaphysical naturalism. Beginning with '' A Treatise of Human Nature'' (1739–40), Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume followed John Locke in rejecting the existence of innate ideas, concluding that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Berkeley as an empiricist. Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. Hume argued that inductive reasoning and belief in causality cannot be justified rationally; instead, they result from custom and mental habit. We never actually perceive that one event causes another but only experience ...
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Quietism (philosophy)
Quietism in philosophy sees the role of philosophy as broadly therapeutic or remedial. Quietist philosophers believe that philosophy has no positive thesis to contribute; rather, it defuses confusions in the linguistic and conceptual frameworks of other subjects, including non-quietist philosophy. For quietists, advancing knowledge or settling debates (particularly those between realists and non-realists) is not the job of philosophy, rather philosophy should liberate the mind by diagnosing confusing concepts. Status within philosophy Crispin Wright said that "Quietism is the view that significant metaphysical debate is impossible." It has been described as "the view or stance that entails avoidance of substantive philosophical theorizing and is usually associated with certain forms of skepticism, pragmatism, and minimalism about truth. More particularly, it is opposed to putting forth positive theses and developing constructive arguments." Quietism by its nature is not a ph ...
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Illusionism
Illusionism in art history means either the artistic tradition in which artists create a work of art that appears to share the physical space with the viewer"Illusionism," ''Grove Art Online''. Oxford University Press, ccessed 17 March 2008 or more broadly the attempt to represent physical appearances precisely – also called mimesis. The term '' realist'' may be used in this sense, but that also has rather different meanings in art, as it is also used to cover the choice of ordinary everyday subject-matter, and avoiding idealizing subjects. Illusionism encompasses a long history, from the deceptions of Zeuxis and Parrhasius to the works of muralist Richard Haas in the twentieth century, that includes ''trompe-l'œil'', anamorphosis, optical art, abstract illusionism, and illusionistic ceiling painting techniques such as ''di sotto in sù'' and ''quadratura''. Sculptural illusionism includes works, often painted, that appear real from a distance. Other forms, such as the i ...
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Reductive Materialism
Type physicalism (also known as reductive materialism, type identity theory, mind–brain identity theory, and identity theory of mind) is a physicalist theory in the philosophy of mind. It asserts that mental events can be grouped into types, and can then be correlated with types of physical events in the brain. For example, one type of mental event, such as "mental pains" will, presumably, turn out to be describing one type of physical event (like C-fiber firings). Type physicalism is contrasted with token identity physicalism, which argues that mental events are unlikely to have "steady" or categorical biological correlates. These positions make use of the philosophical type–token distinction (e.g., Two persons having the same "type" of car need not mean that they share a "token", a single vehicle). Type physicalism can now be understood to argue that there is an identity between types (any mental type is identical with some physical type), whereas token identity physicalism ...
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Psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feelings, and motivation, motives. Psychology is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the Natural science, natural and social sciences. Biological psychologists seek an understanding of the Emergence, emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups.Hockenbury & Hockenbury. Psychology. Worth Publishers, 2010. A professional practitioner or researcher involved in the discipline is called a psychologist. Some psychologists can also be classified as Behavioural sciences, behavioral or Cognitive science, cognitive scientists. Some psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in i ...
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Jacy Reese Anthis
Jacy Reese Anthis ( ; born December 16, 1992) is an American social scientist, writer and co-founder of the Sentience Institute with Kelly Witwicki. He previously worked as a Senior Fellow at Sentience Politics, and before that at Animal Charity Evaluators as chair of the board of directors, then as a full-time researcher. Anthis's research focuses on effective altruism, anti-speciesism, digital minds, and plant-based and cellular agriculture. He was recognized as one of ''Vice''s "Humans of the Year" in December 2017, along with Witwicki. His book, '' The End of Animal Farming'' (2018), speculates that animal farming will end by 2100. Education Anthis attended the University of Texas at Austin, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts and Science in neuroscience in 2015. In 2020, he enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Sociology at the University of Chicago. Career Before finishing his undergraduate degree, Anthis worked on the Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) Board of Directors ...
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Georges Rey
Georges Leon Rey (born 1945) is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland. Biography Rey received a doctoral degree in philosophy from Harvard University in 1978. His thesis was titled ''The possibility of psychology: some preliminary issues'', and was completed under Hilary Putnam. His book ''Contemporary Philosophy of Mind'' discusses the topic of philosophy of mind. One major focus of Rey's exposition relates to eliminativism and instrumentalism, particularly with respect to the mental states that we are subjectively aware of by way of introspection. Rey is the author of the current article on philosophy of mind at Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Books *Reviews of ''Contemporary Philosophy of Mind'': * * * References External links * faculty profile page at the University of Maryland The Language of Thought Hypothesisentry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') i ...
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