Putnam, begins his argument by stating the scientific fiction which state that, let us imagine that our brains have been removed from our bodies and are placed in a vat of nutrient which keeps our brain alive (Putnam, 1981:6). He furthermore explains that we can imagine that the machine (computer) our brains are connected to they cause illusion that everything is normal. (ibid.). 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.). …show more content…
According to Putnam, (1981:7), a self-refuting supposition is one whose truth implies its own falsiry.
He stated the example that consider the thesis that all general statements are false (ibid.). For Putnam this is a general statement, if it is true, then it must be false, therefore it is false (ibid.). For Putnam “although the people in that possible world can think and say any words we can think and say, they cannot (I claim) refer to what we can refer to”(Putnam, 1981:8). Putnam state that people who are in the world of brain in a vat, cannot refer to anything external at all, therefore he concludes that there are no people living in brain in a vat (Putnam, 1981:10). He gave an example of reference, that let us suppose there is a planet on which human evolved, and they have no idea of a tree since trees they do not grow there, and one day the picture of a tree accidentally dropped on their planet by a spaceship (Putnam, 1981:3). For Putnam the mental image is not a representation of a tree in the way that an identical image would be for people whom trees they grow in their planet
(ibid.).
This chapter is composed of concepts that try to differentiate between reality and what is actually happening in your mind, and are we living in a matrix? The Vats and Demons idea creates a vivid
In the textbook, “Everything’s an Argument”, there is an article from Charles A. Riley’s book “Disability and the Media: Prescription for Change”. Charles A. Riley, a professor at Baruch College and has obtained many awards for his writing on related issues about disabilities. Charles Riley has written many books on Disability and the Media; Disability and Business and has been honored with City’s Leading figure in New York for supporting the rights of people with disabilities. In the article, Charles has explained the why there is a need of change on how media illustrate the people with disabilities. In the article, he has also written that how celebrities with disabilities are treated in the media. Celebrities with disabilities are forgiven
In May of 1776 a resolution was passed at the Virginia Convention in Williamsburg that asked the thirteen American colonies to declare the United Colonies free and independent from the British crown. At the second continental congress the resolution passed and on June 11, 1776 a five-man committee led by Thomas Jefferson was established to write the Declaration of Independence. On July 4, 1776 the members of the second continental congress signed into existence one of the most influential documents in history.
On December 2,2015 I went to to the Lynnhaven building to receive some feedback on my agreement paper for English 111. It was a very rainy day after running through the rain when I reached the writing center room. There was a yellow note saying that the writing center was in the student center until December 4,2015. After reading the note I ran back in the rain to my car.It was to cold to walk it was raining. As I approached the student center I was told by a security guard that the tutoring lab was located on the third floor. I had walked up three flights of stairs. When I had finally reached the third floor,I walk into the tutoring lab. There were about eight tables, but only four staff members and one student. Amen had approached me asking what did I need help with today. I replied saying that I would like some feedback on my paper for English. He then pointed to the writing table and said “she can assist you with your paper”.
Even though there are many cases and arguments for Dualism concerning mind - body, such as Descartes’ substance dualism, the theory does not often have hard, physical evidence to back up such premise like science does. The continued scientific progress over the past centuries has allowed us to better understand universal truths and the functions of the mind-body that were not able to have been explained scientifically in the past. Many complex, unexplained complexities have been simplified or “reduced” through chemistry,biology, or physics. Through both comparison of arguments supporting dualist theories and counter arguments, I will prove that Dualism is a concept of the past and the continued scientific progress is inevitable and will one day allow us to understand many Dualistic explanations with hard evidence and scientific proof that we have failed to do so in the past.
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe”( Douglass). This famous quote epitomizes the philosophies of Frederick Douglass, in which he wanted everyone to be treated with dignity; if everyone was not treated with equality, no one person or property would be safe harm. His experience as a house slave, field slave and ship builder gave him the knowledge to develop into a persuasive speaker and abolitionist. In his narrative, he makes key arguments to white abolitionist and Christians on why slavery should be abolished. The key arguments that Frederick Douglass tries to vindicate are that slavery denies slaves of their identity, slavery is also detrimental for the slave owner, and slavery is ungodly.
How can the brain be a mind, a conscious person? Recently, some philosophers have argued that human consciousness and cognitive activity, including even our moral cognition and behavior, can best be explained using a connectionist or neural network model of the brain (see Churchland 1995; Dennett 1991 and 1996). (1) Is this right? Can a mass of networked neurons produce moral human agents? I shall argue that it can; a brain can be morally excellent. A connectionist account of how the brain works can explain how a person might be morally excellent in Aristotle's sense of that term.
...r differences between particular humans and changes within one particular brain. One obvious example of this objection is that stroke victims lose brain function and the mental states associated with them, but in time they are able to relearn mental states using different parts of their brain. This certainly discounts the fact that one mental state is identical to one brain state.
... Theory is instrumental in explaining how the mind can be considered an entity that is separate from the body. We can come to this conclusion by first understanding that we are real, and we cannot logically doubt our own presence, because the act of doubting is thinking, which makes you a thinker. Next, we realize that the mind, and all of its experiences and thoughts, will remain the same no matter what changes or destruction that’s endured by the body. Then we can grasp that we are our minds and not our physical bodies. We can use a number of examples to illustrate that these concepts, including the movie The Matrix. Finally, we can disapprove John Locke’s objections to the Dualist Theory by identifying that the mind is capable of conscious and unconscious thought; therefore, it cannot be divisible like the body. Hence the mind is a separate entity from the body.
His conclusion is that sensible ideas, being so remarkably and reliably coordinated, must be the product of nothing other than an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God, or an infinite mind. Sensations, then, are created out of God 's will and are in conformity with what he calls the “Laws of Nature,” which provides us with the ability to make predictions about and find correlations amongst these ideas (36; sec. 30). Berkeley further expounds on the character of sensory ideas, reassuring the reader that they contain a greater reality than ideas of imagination and should be thought of as “real things.” Ideas of the latter variety are akin to “images of things,” or mere imitations of real things. Neither class of ideas can exist unperceived but, nevertheless, imagination is under the power of human will and sensation under that of God. (37; sec.
The desire to avoid dualism has been the driving motive behind much contemporary work on the mind-body problem. Gilbert Ryle made fun of it as the theory of 'the ghost in the machine', and various forms of behaviorism and materialism are designed to show that a place can be found for thoughts, sensations, feelings, and other mental phenomena in a purely physical world. But these theories have trouble accounting for consciousness and its subjective qualia. As the science develops and we discover facts, dualism does not seems likely to be true.
In the article Postman’s strengthens his argument by not only speaking his mind on what he believes but by also providing proof why he sides with Huxley. He says that, “As nowhere else in the world, Americans have moved far and fast in bringing to a close the age of the slow-moving printed word, and have granted to television sovereignty over all of their institutions. By ushering in the age of television, America has given the world the clearest available glimpse of the Huxleyan future, 2000.” He doesn’t just agree with what Huxley said he gives proof that because of these electronics like the TV we have started veering towards the future that Huxley said where nobody would even want to read books. I would again have to say that his viewpoints
The traditional notion that seeks to compare human minds, with all its intricacies and biochemical functions, to that of artificially programmed digital computers, is self-defeating and it should be discredited in dialogs regarding the theory of artificial intelligence. This traditional notion is akin to comparing, in crude terms, cars and aeroplanes or ice cream and cream cheese. Human mental states are caused by various behaviours of elements in the brain, and these behaviours in are adjudged by the biochemical composition of our brains, which are responsible for our thoughts and functions. When we discuss mental states of systems it is important to distinguish between human brains and that of any natural or artificial organisms which is said to have central processing systems (i.e. brains of chimpanzees, microchips etc.). Although various similarities may exist between those systems in terms of functions and behaviourism, the intrinsic intentionality within those systems differ extensively. Although it may not be possible to prove that whether or not mental states exist at all in systems other than our own, in this paper I will strive to present arguments that a machine that computes and responds to inputs does indeed have a state of mind, but one that does not necessarily result in a form of mentality. This paper will discuss how the states and intentionality of digital computers are different from the states of human brains and yet they are indeed states of a mind resulting from various functions in their central processing systems.
In a world of science, religion, ignorance and opinion common perception on whether or not the mind is separate from the brain has switched more times than one can track. A dualistic view on the body/mind relationship continues to be scrutinized day in and day out. As I will explain throughout the argument dualism is facing increasingly more constraints as time goes on. An evaluation of the mind/body argument from a Humean perspective proves dualism to be flawed in key aspects, where in contrast a materialistic approach is not affected.
Can Computers Think? The Case For and Against Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence has been the subject of many bad "80's" movies and countless science fiction novels. But what happens when we seriously consider the question of computers that think. Is it possible for computers to have complex thoughts, and even emotions, like homo sapien? This paper will seek to answer that question and also look at what attempts are being made to make artificial intelligence (hereafter called AI) a reality. Before we can investigate whether or not computers can think, it is necessary to establish what exactly thinking is. Examining the three main theories is sort of like examining three religions. None offers enough support so as to effectively eliminate the possibility of the others being true. The three main theories are: 1. Thought doesn't exist; enough said. 2. Thought does exist, but is contained wholly in the brain. In other words, the actual material of the brain is capable of what we identify as thought. 3. Thought is the result of some sort of mystical phenomena involving the soul and a whole slew of other unprovable ideas. Since neither reader nor writer is a scientist, for all intents and purposes, we will say only that thought is what we (as homo sapien) experience. So what are we to consider intelligence? The most compelling argument is that intelligence is the ability to adapt to an environment. Desktop computers can, say, go to a specific WWW address. But, if the address were changed, it wouldn't know how to go about finding the new one (or even that it should). So intelligence is the ability to perform a task taking into consideration the circumstances of completing the task. So now that we have all of that out of that way, can computers think? The issue is contested as hotly among scientists as the advantages of Superman over Batman is among pre-pubescent boys. On the one hand are the scientists who say, as philosopher John Searle does, that “Programs are all syntax and no semantics.” (Discover, 106) Put another way, a computer can actually achieve thought because it “merely follows rules that tell it how to shift symbols without ever understanding the meaning of those symbols.” (Discover, 106) On the other side of the debate are the advocates of pandemonium, explained by Robert Wright in Time thus: “[O]ur brain subconsciously generates competing theories about the world, and only the ‘winning' theory becomes part of consciousness.