What is a Mind? - Softcover

King, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1907962298 ISBN 13: 9781907962295

Publisher: 123 Books, 2011

Synopsis

The concept of 'having a mind' is one of the key concepts that we use to carve a division of extreme significance into the universe. We say that parts of the universe 'have a mind' and that parts of the universe do not 'have a mind'. But what exactly is a mind? In this book John King claims that to have a mind is to think; this may seem obvious. But on route to this conclusion he discards a multitude of views concerning the mental - that 'having a mind' is to do with freedom, or awareness, or intentionality, or perception, or feeling states, or the inner cause of certain movements, or a 'central core' of these attributes. This analysis is sure to help the reader clarify their own beliefs about what a mind is.

About this title

From the Publisher

It is seemingly very important to try and understand which parts of the universe have a mind; one might want to treat a part of the universe differently according to whether or not one believed that it contained a mind. However, it is very unclear which parts of the universe contain minds. Robots, insects, fish, mice, chess-playing computers, humans in a coma, dolphins, babies - it is possible that some, none or all, of these parts of the universe contain a mind. There is such widespread disagreement concerning which parts of the universe contain minds because it so unclear what having a mind entails.

In this book John King aims to get to the heart of the matter of what having a mind entails by rejecting lots of views which he finds to be indefensible when closely scrutinised. Here is an excerpt: "As a contrast to these examples of mind without awareness it is worth considering the possibility that a human could have both a mind and awareness continuously. This possibility has supposedly been realised in various humans such as Thai Ngoc who claims to have been in a continuous state of awareness for thirty-three years. These various scenarios imply that there are several possible relationships between mind and awareness, and suggest that whilst the two phenomena may co-occur, that they are fundamentally different phenomena. How might one object to the conclusion that mind and awareness are fundamentally different phenomena?"

Edition details

• Publisher: 123 Books
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1907962298
• ISBN 13: 9781907962295
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 86