The Philosophy Of Mind By Paul Churchland - 1327 Words

Philosophy of Mind In contemporary philosophy of mind, talk of perception has fallen out of favour. Indeed most writers to deny perception altogether, or claim that they do not matter. Instead they reduce perception to reality, or speak of the â€Å"really real.† Perception are said to be â€Å"nothing but† particles or waves or structured brain events. â€Å"Always already† â€Å"Nothing but† matter and motion. One influential philosopher of mind, Paul Churchland in his book The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul replaces the perceiver with functioning biological bodies. The perceiver gets reduced to an organized body, mind becomes the brain, body motions become actions, man becomes the person. Churchland redefines phenomenal qualities as being nothing but properties of the brain. Cognitive events such as understanding, recognising, feeling, and perceiving are replaced with neural analogs. Here psychological events are treated solely as neural events. This is the prevai ling view in cognitive science. These contemporary materialists have two claims. This first claim is that all perceptions can be explained in terms of or by reference to neural events and the like. The second claim is that there are only neural events (and other physical events in the environment). At the heart of the dismissal of perception is the combination of two beliefs. The first is that science, especially neurological science, has access to reality; and second, the distrust of perceiver-dependent events. As modernShow MoreRelatedThe Mind-Body Problem Essay1204 Words   |  5 PagesWith the number of brain injury cases observed and the continuous advances in neuroscience, this has proven to be strong evidence in supporting materialism. 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