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The definition of Semantics
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Sigrid Axelsson
SP3A
Philosophy 1
Philosophy of language; Essay Question # 4
This essay will specifically try to answer question number;
4) What is the meaning of ‘in the head’ (ideational)? How does Wittgenstein’s beetle box through experiment suggest otherwise?
The meaning “in the head” is ideational and the Wittgenstein beetle box theory supports that everything is created in the head and is ideational, but not that everyone has the same concept of reality.
Is the meaning “in the head” (ideational)? Ideational is when an idea pops up in one’s head and a light bulb is switched on within the person who has the ideational moment in the mind. Yes, “in the head” is referring to the ideational theories where a sentence or a word is, as an example “in the head” is referring to the metal image of the inside of the head that is created in the brain when the word or sentence of “in the head” is seen and heard by the human being. This is seen with Locke’s explanation, that when the word red is seen or heard, the brain portrays redness as the metal image within the brain, and th...
In summary, it is my belief that our mind exists within our brain; however that is just its housing. Upon the death of our physical body our mind moves and inhabits our soul in a similar way. In terms of the immortality of our mind, it undergoes a transformation so great during these transitions that the old mind no longer exists as it did. Over time, if the soul dies as well, and the mind transitions again to a different vessel, these changes continually alter and shape the mind to the point where it is no longer the original.
In “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop, the narrator attempts to understand the relationship between humans and nature and finds herself concluding that they are intertwined due to humans’ underlying need to take away from nature, whether through the act of poetic imagination or through the exploitation and contamination of nature. Bishop’s view of nature changes from one where it is an unknown, mysterious, and fearful presence that is antagonistic, to one that characterizes nature as being resilient when faced against harm and often victimized by people. Mary Oliver’s poem also titled “The Fish” offers a response to Bishop’s idea that people are harming nature, by providing another reason as to why people are harming nature, which is due to how people are unable to view nature as something that exists and goes beyond the purpose of serving human needs and offers a different interpretation of the relationship between man and nature. Oliver believes that nature serves as subsidence for humans, both physically and spiritually. Unlike Bishop who finds peace through understanding her role in nature’s plight and acceptance at the merging between the natural and human worlds, Oliver finds that through the literal act of consuming nature can she obtain a form of empowerment that allows her to become one with nature.
In addition all the objects, people and the sky that we perceive, and all our experiences are just the result of electronic impulses travelling from the computer to the nerve endings. (ibid.). However, he start by posing doubts by asking that if our brains were in a vat, could we say or think that we were (Putnam, 1981:7). He furthermore argued that we could not (ibid.). For Putnam, it cannot be true that, if our brains are a vat and we say or think that we were, for Putnam it is self-refuting (ibid.).
Abercrombie states that the human brain plays an active role in shaping the information presented to us, based on one’s past experiences. Kahneman claims that the human mind uses two systems of thinking, System 1 and System 2, where System 2 is more active and effortful than System 1. I attempt to illustrate how Abercrombie and Kahneman's ideal concepts of the perception of reality are applicable to real situations, by referring to the following three readings: Jung’s “The Personal and the Collective Unconscious,” Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” and Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The three readings relate to Abercrombie and Kahneman, considering the overlapping concepts of reality, that words and metaphors structure our understanding of what is real, reality can be altered from different perspectives, and that ignorance can actually be bliss.
In his paper Realism and Skepticism: Brains in a Vat Revisited, Graeme Forbes considers Putnam’s brains in a vat (BIV) argument. According to Forbes (1995), Putnam argues that in order for a normally embodied thinker to think about such concepts as brain, in and vat, she “must somehow be informationally linked to” instances of those concepts (206). However, Forbes does not consider (and he does not think he needs to consider) what particular sorts of informational links are sufficient to enable a thinker to think about the concepts, though he seems to suggest that an is-and-always-has-been BIV has no such informational links (206). In other words, a BIV cannot think about the concepts of brain, in and vat and it
In J.J.C. Smart’s essay, Sensations and Brain Processes, he disagrees with dualism as he believes that states of consciousness and brain processes are similar. He presents a case where he reports that he sees a round and yellowish-orange after-image. He describes various perspectives about what he is actually reporting. He claims that he could not be reporting anything, and that this after-image is only the result of him having a temptation to say that he sees it. Another example involves an individual reporting pain, and, like the after-image example, he or she could not be reporting anything as well. In regards to both the reporting of the after-image and pain, Smart disagrees with the claim that these reports are “irreducibly psychical,” (Rosen 372) which means they cannot be reduced to mental properties.
Images in people’s brain would be something that is being reorganized based on their memories. Moreover, the imaginations they have is also be relevant to their earlier experiences. “[Dennis] see myself visually-but it is as I last law [himself], when [Dennis] was thirteen……[Dennis] see the Braille notes visually-they are visual images, not tactile” (336). The person went blindness after the ago thirteen, therefore he “see” himself base on his latest visual memory. The changes of brain in order to deal with challenges of losing sight does not create some fancy images in his mind with no evidence or reasons. The brain does not go too far from the real world, but organize inputs and create an images in people’s mind based on those inputs. Inputs includes one’s experience, memory and sensory inputs such as touch. Dennis “see notes visually” based on inputs from touching, then the brain transforms feelings into visual images. Another person who become blind at the age of fifteen wrote “I still ‘see’ objects in front of me. As I typing now I can see my hands on the keyboard” (331). She may use her memory of keyboard and touch as inputs which allow the brain to imagine and create images. Therefore, imaginations in one’s brain do not come for no
Mental imagery is the idea in a person's mind of the physical world outside of that person. It is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of perceiving some object or event, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually occurring with the senses. Traditionally, visual mental imagery, the most discussed variety, was thought to be caused by the presence of picture-like representations (mental images) in the mind, soul, or brain, but this is no longer universally accepted. Mental imagery is important because it occurs in many cognitive tasks, and helps us understand related phenomena such as hallucinations, day-dreams, and dreaming. It also may be useful to understand how elicit imagery
Another trend is to discount these metaphors as erroneous, irrelevant, or deceptively misleading. Yet, these metaphors are generated by the same Mind that is to be described by them. The entities or processes to which the brain is compared are also "brain-children", the results of "brain-storming", conceived by "minds". What is a computer, a software application, a communications network if not a (material) representation of cerebral events?
Learners have shown that the acquisition of knowledge is a two-input contribution were an individual must strive to make sense of fresh information by actively implementing prior knowledge to be able to understand a new subject. The reason why no certainty can be entirely drawn from imagination or intuition is because both ways of knowing base off their processing of information in the same way; with the help of previous knowledge the mind has already acquired somewhere else. Therefore ideas and thoughts that claim to be born out of imagination and intuition turn out to be a mere hybrid interpretation of previously processed ideas. Intuition and imagination provide juxtaposition because even though they're supposed to be ideals defined by creativity
The human being consists of the mind and the body. The following quote directly supports his theory of mind/body dualism, “Nature also teaches that I am present to my body not merely in the way that a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am most tightly joined and, so to speak, commingled with it, so much that I and the body constitute one single thing.” (65). This is simply saying that the mind influences the body and the body influences the mind. The mind affects the body by causing movement. When I want to stand up and walk across the room, I am thinking in my mind this action which is then acted out by signals being sent through my body. The body affects the mind by causing sensations. If I were to stub my toe as I am walking across the room, the feeling of pain is sent from my body and perceived by my mind as pain. He says that all of this happens in a part of the brain (67). But how can a space be specified for an unextended substance that doesn’t occupy
Wittgenstein states in the Tractatus,“The logical picture of the facts is the thought” (35). If we are capable of thinking atomic facts, that means we are able to picture it within ourselves. The combination of all the thoughts within you make the world possible. Each thought has states of affairs, but when the thought is acted upon is becomes apart of reality. Wittgenstein says, “We cannot hink anything unlogical, for otherwise we should have to think unlogically” (35). Wittgenstein explains this in a simple manner. If you have a geometric shape and give a person co-ordinates within that shape, they will find it. If you had the same shape and give a person co-ordinates that are not in that space, how will they ever find it? They have no reference to go in. It is impossible (36). We must stay within the bounds of logic, it is impossible to cross the line.
After reading Berkeley’s work on the Introduction of Principles of Human Knowledge, he explains that the mental ideas that we possess can only resemble other ideas and that the external world does not consist of physical form or reality but yet they are just ideas. Berkeley claimed abstract ideas as the source of philosophy perplexity and illusion. In the introduction of Principles of Human Knowledge,
Ideas are man's thoughts. They are fainter copies of impressions, and so they are images in the imagination that are remembered.
The mind is divided up into three sections according to Freud. It consists of the conscious, preconscious, and the unconscious mind. In Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality, the conscious mind consists of everything inside of our awareness. (Psychology) This part of the mind is known for keeping hold of our senses, memories and perception in our awareness. This part of our mind can tie into our preconscious mind as well, through the things we aren’t aware of though when thought about its presence is in our conscious mind now.