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There is only one mind/body problem

There is only one mind/body problem
There is only one mind/body problem
In our century a Frege/Brentano wedge has gradually been driven into the mind/body problem so deeply that it appears to have split it into two: The problem of "qualia" and the problem of "intentionality." Both problems use similar intuition pumps: For qualia, we imagine a robot that is indistinguishable from us in every objective respect, but it lacks subjective experiences; it is mindless. For intentionality, we again imagine a robot that is indistinguishable from us in every objective respect but its "thoughts" lack "aboutness"; they are meaningless. I will try to show that there is a way to re-unify the mind/body problem by grounding the "language of thought" (symbols) in our perceptual categorization capacity. The model is bottom-up and hybrid symbolic/nonsymbolic.
521
Harnad, Stevan
442ee520-71a1-4283-8e01-106693487d8b
Harnad, Stevan
442ee520-71a1-4283-8e01-106693487d8b

Harnad, Stevan (2001) There is only one mind/body problem. Journal of Psychology, 27(3-4, 521.

Record type: Article

Abstract

In our century a Frege/Brentano wedge has gradually been driven into the mind/body problem so deeply that it appears to have split it into two: The problem of "qualia" and the problem of "intentionality." Both problems use similar intuition pumps: For qualia, we imagine a robot that is indistinguishable from us in every objective respect, but it lacks subjective experiences; it is mindless. For intentionality, we again imagine a robot that is indistinguishable from us in every objective respect but its "thoughts" lack "aboutness"; they are meaningless. I will try to show that there is a way to re-unify the mind/body problem by grounding the "language of thought" (symbols) in our perceptual categorization capacity. The model is bottom-up and hybrid symbolic/nonsymbolic.

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More information

Published date: 2001
Additional Information: Presented at Symposium on the Perception of Intentionality, XXV World Congress of Psychology, Brussels, Belgium, July 1992
Organisations: Web & Internet Science

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Local EPrints ID: 256464
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/256464
PURE UUID: d5c2f8b4-e5cc-4021-9917-22a0d0c80cb0
ORCID for Stevan Harnad: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-6153-1129

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Date deposited: 02 Apr 2002
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 02:48

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Author: Stevan Harnad ORCID iD

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