Instincts and learning
Intentionality – the third defining property of the mind which we discussed in Week 4 – makes us engage with things in the outside world in order to meet our …
Course: What is a Mind?
Mark answers – Week 4
Ask Mark responses I have recorded responses to some of the many interesting questions arising from this course. As with previous weeks, I wanted to link you to videos where …
What’s next
The fourth defining feature of a mind is agency – sometimes also referred to as ‘free will’. If unconscious intentionality exists, to what extent can one be a mind as …
The ethics of our instincts: The good, the bad and the brain
Since the brain is the organ of the mind, the human mind too must in some fundamental sense be designed to maximise our chances of surviving to reproduce. The influence …
Anatomy and physiology of intentionality
Intentionality, from a neuroscience perspective, works through the reticular activating system in the upper brain stem. Remember that this is the level of the brain that generates consciousness. It is …
About “aboutness” – intentionality
Mental states always intend towards something; in other words you can’t have a thought unless it’s about something. I have said that consciousness is about feelings. Feelings tell you that …
What’s next
This week focused on consciousness and we also touched on the unconscious mind, however the mind is also intentional. The mind intends towards something, it aims towards something. The intentionality …
The unconscious mind
To say a mind is consciousness is not sufficient to define the mental. Sigmund Freud’s great discovery was that there’s a large part of the mind that operates without consciousness, …
What consciousness is for
Being conscious is about more than being awake, it also feels like something to be awake. And these feelings give us a clue about what consciousness is for. The reticular …
What is emotion?
Your feelings – or emotions – register the state of you. Emotions may be triggered by external events, but they do not register the events themselves, they register your reaction …
The anatomy of consciousness
Last week I said that a mind is first and foremost subjective. But I also stated implicitly that subjectivity is not enough of an explanation for what a mind is. …
What’s next
This week has focused on subjectivity, but a mind is more than a subject, it also feels like something to be a mind. This is conscious feeling or consciousness and …
Engaging with ELIZA
Earlier I spoke about ELIZA and argued that ELIZA does not in fact have a mind. The Turing Test looks at ELIZA’s objective behaviour – her responses to questions posed …
Empathising with other minds
If to know a mind requires that you are that mind, how can you know for certain whether other minds exist? This is a problem in philosophy known as the …
Testing for subjectivity
In order to perform scientific experiments on the mind, we need an objective criterion for determining whether something else has a mind or not. Mathematician, Alan Turing, designed the Turing …
