Human Minds (HM)

• Descartes: HM immaterial spirits acting from the central cavity of the brain

• Many Contemporary Philosophers: HM computational mechanisms housed in the “wetware” of the brain

CNS/Thermostat

• Control Systems

1. Adaptive2. Complexity3. Biology/Identity4. Learning

(Adaptive) Control System

• Nervous system coordinates adaptive responses

• Overall function: adaptive interaction with environment

• Enables animal to detect relevant events, select responses, and be guided by the effects of the responses (feedback)

Complexity

Identity

• Humans seek more than biological survival

• Cooney suggests not simply “staying alive” setting but “identity” setting

• A conjunction of prescriptions that enables me to continue to be not only the kind of animal I am, but also the kind of individual I am

Learning

1996: Kasparov defeats Deep Blue

1997: Deep Blue defeats Kasparov

Brain Events & Subjective Experience

• Neural code: nerves & brain sites --> same sort of content/patterned impulses

• Neural code analyzable: spatial relations, energy, duration, frequency, etc.

• Subjective “transduction” of code: qualitatively different sensations (not observable or mathematically analyzable)

Functionalist Theory

• Most brain events are remarkably similar at the cellular level

• How to explain then the diversity of color, sound and other qualitative experience?

• Spatiotemporal patterning, resulting input/out relations of neurons with each other and with external environment