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From: Sir Frederick Martin on 30 May 2010 22:48
On Sun, 30 May 2010 18:57:53 -0700 (PDT), Ed <edgarsv(a)att.net> wrote:

>On May 30, 8:25�pm, Immortalist <reanimater_2...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>> ...For a number of important historical reasons, the philosophy of
>> mind has become the central topic in contemporary philosophy. For most
>> of the twentieth century the philosophy of language was "first
>> philosophy." Other branches of philosophy were seen as derived from
>> the philosophy of language and dependent on results in the philosophy
>> of language for their solution.
>>
>> The center of attention has now moved from language to mind.
>>
>> Why? Well, first, I think many of us working in the philosophy of
>> language see many of the questions of language as special cases of
>> questions about the mind. Our use of language is an expression of our
>> more biologically fundamental mental capacities, and we will not fully
>> understand the functioning of language until we see how it is grounded
>> in our mental abilities.
>>
>> A second reason is that with the growth of knowledge we have seen a
>> movement away from treating the theory of knowledge, epistemology, as
>> central in philosophy and we are now prepared to do a more
>> substantive, theoretical, constructive philosophy, rather than just
>> dealing piecemeal with specific traditional problems. The ideal place
>> to begin that constructive philosophy is to start by examining the
>> nature of the human mind.
>>
>> A third reason for the centrality of the mind is that, for many of us,
>> myself included, the central question in philosophy at the beginning
>> of the twenty-first century is how to give an account of ourselves as
>> apparently conscious, mindful, free, rational, speaking, social, and
>> political agents in a world that science tells us consists entirely of
>> mindless, meaningless, physical particles. Who are we, and how do we
>> fit into the rest of the world? How does the human reality relate to
>> the rest of reality? One special form of this question is, What does
>> it mean to be human? The answers to these questions have to begin with
>> a discussion of the mind,
>>
>> �because mental phenomena form
>> �the bridge by which we connect
>> �with the rest of the world.
>>
>> A fourth reason for the preeminence of the philosophy of mind has been
>> the invention of "cognitive science," a new discipline that attempts
>> to go deeper into the nature of the mind than was customary in
>> traditional empirical psychology. Cognitive science requires a
>> foundation in the philosophy of mind.
>>
>> Finally, more controversially, I think the philosophy of language has
>> reached a period of relative stagnation because of certain common
>> mistakes that surround the doctrine of so-called externalism, the idea
>> that the meanings of words, and by extension the contents of our
>> minds, are not inside our heads, but are matters of causal relations
>> between what is in our heads and the external world. ...the failures
>> to give an account of language on an externalist premise have led to a
>> fallow period in the philosophy of language; and the philosophy of
>> mind has taken up the slack.
>>
>> Let us suppose then that the mind is now the central topic in
>> philosophy and that other questions, such as the nature of language
>> and meaning, the nature of society, and the nature of knowledge are
>> all in one way or another special cases of the more general
>> characteristics of the human mind, How should we proceed to examine
>> the mind?
>>
>> "The philosophy of mind is unique among contemporary philosophical
>> subjects, in that all of the most famous and influential theories are
>> false - [We need] to rescue the truth from the overwhelming urge to
>> falsehood.
>>
>> Mind: A Brief Introduction - John R. Searlehttp://www.amazon.com/Mind-Brief-Introduction-Fundamentals-Philosophy...
>
>Maybe the first step ought to be to sketch out what "mind" is. I
>suppose we're pretty sure what it means as applied to people but it
>seem that that is starting with the most complex and tricky case that
>we know of. In the spirit of reductionism perhaps we should start
>with simpler cases like the "mind" of animals or the the extent to
>which computers do or do not have "mind" and how we know that.

To me, "mind" is of the 'virtual reality' about which I constantly
rant . The information structures supported by neural
or silicon physical structures, may contain representations
of 'self', as well as the context. Representations of those
information structures may then be considered as "mind"
by the canonic folk talk and even evolved 'self' qualia.

Thus animals and machines may 'have' 'mind', (and qualia).
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