![]() And the full naturalization of human nature might have considerable personal, moral and even spiritual implications, which is why, ultimately, we might care about consciousness. If we could integrate consciousness into the rest of science, then we’d see we’re all-natural creatures, not partly ethereal or supernatural. But apart from the intellectual pleasures of trying to solve this conundrum, why should we care about the relation of mind to body? One answer is that commonsense dualism about consciousness – that it involves something categorically mental or non-physical – is perhaps the last barrier to a fully naturalistic understanding of ourselves. Considering this problem – the “hard problem” of consciousness as it’s now called – our concepts of the mental and physical collide and produce intense puzzlement. How can Hercule Poirot’s “little grey cells” produce, generate, or entail in some sense or another conscious experiences, such as pain, taste, and color? Poirot’s problem-solving ability is one thing, his phenomenal experience quite another, perhaps. ![]() ![]() ![]() Consciousness: An Introduction - softcover, 459 pagesĬonsciousness: A Very Short Introduction - softcover, 146 pagesĬonversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think about the Brain, Free Will, and What It Means to Be Human - hardcover, 274 pagesįor the philosophically inclined, the mind-body problem has special attraction just because it’s so intractable. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |