Ghost in the machine. Gilbert Ryle[edit] Gilbert Ryle (1900–76) was a philosopher who lectured at Oxford and made important contributions to the philosophy of mind and to "ordinary language philosophy". His most important writings include Philosophical Arguments (1945), The Concept of Mind (1949), Dilemmas (1954), Plato's Progress (1966), and On Thinking (1979). Ryle's The Concept of Mind (1949) is a critique of the notion that the mind is distinct from the body, and a rejection of the theory that mental states are separable from physical states. In this book Ryle refers to the idea of a fundamental distinction between mind and matter as "the ghost in the machine". According to Ryle, the classical theory of mind, or "Cartesian rationalism", makes a basic category mistake, because it attempts to analyze the relation between "mind" and "body" as if they were terms of the same logical category.
The Concept of Mind[edit] Official doctrine[edit] Ryle's estimation of the official doctrine[edit] Popular culture[edit] For the brain, practice makes efficiency, not perfection. The brain isn't a static piece of hardware like a computer. If it needs to do something repeatedly, it's able to remodel itself in order to cope with the cognitive demands. Past studies have indicated London cab drivers see an expansion of the area of the brain that's involved in spatial reasoning, while professional musicians see an expansion of the area of the brain that provides control over their muscle actions. Normally, more neural hardware means a higher energetic cost, as cells require a certain amount of energy purely for maintenance (even more when they are active).
But a study that tracked the control of limb movements in monkeys suggests that the brain actually executes control over well-practiced movements with increased efficiency, burning through fewer calories in the process. The procedure for the tests was fairly simple: a small group of monkeys was trained to do a variety of tasks. One of the tasks didn't involve their arms at all and acted as a control. Anthropic principle. Digital physics. Digital physics is grounded in one or more of the following hypotheses; listed in order of decreasing strength. The universe, or reality: History[edit] The hypothesis that the universe is a digital computer was pioneered by Konrad Zuse in his book Rechnender Raum (translated into English as Calculating Space).
The term digital physics was first employed by Edward Fredkin, who later came to prefer the term digital philosophy.[3] Others who have modeled the universe as a giant computer include Stephen Wolfram,[4] Juergen Schmidhuber,[5] and Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft.[6] These authors hold that the apparently probabilistic nature of quantum physics is not necessarily incompatible with the notion of computability. Quantum versions of digital physics have recently been proposed by Seth Lloyd,[7] David Deutsch, and Paola Zizzi.[8] Overview[edit] Some try to identify single physical particles with simple bits. Weizsäcker's ur-alternatives[edit] Wheeler's "it from bit"[edit] Tetrapharmakos.
The Tetrapharmakos (τετραφάρμακος) "four-part remedy" is a summary of the first four of the Κύριαι Δόξαι (Kuriai Doxai, the forty Epicurean Principal Doctrines given by Diogenes Laërtius in his Life of Epicurus) in Epicureanism, a recipe for leading the happiest possible life. They are recommendations to avoid anxiety or existential dread.[1] The four-part cure[edit] As expressed by Philodemos, and preserved in a Herculaneum Papyrus (1005, 5.9–14), the tetrapharmakos reads:[4] This is a summary of the first four of the forty Epicurean Principal Doctrines (Sovran Maxims) given by Diogenes Laërtius, which in the translation by Robert Drew Hicks (1925) read as follows: 1.
A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness 2. 3. 4. Don't fear god[edit] Don't worry about death[edit] As D. What is good is easy to get[edit] References and notes[edit] Podcast Episodes. Syllogism. A syllogism (Greek: συλλογισμός – syllogismos – "conclusion," "inference") is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two or more propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true.
In its earliest form, defined by Aristotle, from the combination of a general statement (the major premise) and a specific statement (the minor premise), a conclusion is deduced. For example, knowing that all men are mortal (major premise) and that Socrates is a man (minor premise), we may validly conclude that Socrates is mortal.
Syllogistic arguments are usually represented in a three-line form (without sentence-terminating periods): All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal The word "therefore" is usually either omitted or replaced by the symbol "∴" Early history[edit] From the Middle Ages onwards, categorical syllogism and syllogism were usually used interchangeably. Aristotle[edit] Medieval Scholarship[edit] Boethius John Buridan. Harmonia Philosophica Main Thesis « Harmonia Philosophica. Author: Spiros Kakos Harmonia Philosophica Facebook page Religion-Science Philosophy articles series Credo quia absurdum [5] I believe because it is illogical We all look at the same one reality with the same tools.
The answer I give in this articleis that we just use different words to describe the same things, or see the same thing from different point of view. For example, the world can be eternal (as Heracletus said), but at the same time have a First Cause (as Aristotle said) the Absolute Infinite that was first discovered by Georg Cantor and actually contains all “lower-level” infinites. All these antinomies show us what we cannot see because of our stuborness to use right-wrong disctinction: that the world is “ONE”. Those who believe in scientism want more “control” over nature and reality. Man has to awaken to wonder – and so perhaps do peoples. Ludwig Wittgenstein How can someone fly if all he has been taught is how to crawl? De omnibus dubitandum est Albert Einstein. Uses of Great Men. IT IS NATURAL to believe in great men. If the companions of our childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their condition regal it would not surprise us.
All mythology opens with demigods, and the circumstance is high and poetic; that is, their genius is paramount. In the legends of the Gautama, the first men ate the earth and found it deliciously sweet. Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society; and, actually or ideally, we manage to live with superiors. The search after the great man is the dream of youth and the most serious occupation of manhood. The race goes with us on their credit. Our religion is the love and cherishing of these patrons.
But he must be related to us, and our life receive from him some promise of explanation. But this comes later. Table of Contents. An Essay by Einstein -- The World As I See It. "How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...
"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. "My political ideal is democracy. Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art.