Mugen's Public Library
metaphysics
On Non-Human Animal Thought & Conciousness
The question of non-human animals’ capacity to think is one that holds many implications on the nature of thought and consciousness. Are the two dichotomous or represent a spectrum on which human thought is but a point on this continuum. This paper will explore Descartes and Malcom’s interpretations of three distinct dimensions of the problem as well as my response to both philosophers analyses. These three questions are the question of the distinction or contingency between thought and consciousness, whether thoughts consisting of propositional content and attitudes are to be considered paradigms of thought, and whether “thinking” and “holding thought” should be equated. These dimensions synthesize into a concrete answer on whether nonhuman animals are capable of thought, be it a Cartesian anthropocentric argument of the necessity of consciousness for thought (455), or Malcoms claim that animals can have a form of thought even if we’re incapable of affirming it (460). I will first introduce Descartes’ account of the question of non-human animal thought followed by my conjectures and Malcolms solution to the problem.
A Continuation of Hilary Putnam's “Robots: machines or artificially created life?”
With the rise of self-governing machines in the 1960s, questions of the possibility of robot consciousness have perplexed philosophers and paralleled our own understanding of human consciousness. The thought of sentient robots has acted as an outlet for unadulterated introspection into the necessary conditions for consciousness as well as the recognition of consciousness in other things with
minds (twms). In his paper “Robots: machines or artificially created life?”, Putnam engages with arguments that attempt to situate consciousness within the psychological or physical organization of twms, and in turn attribute or dismiss consciousness in robots. Putnam concludes that no conditions establish or dismiss the possibility for consciousness in robots, however, our capacity to recognize
consciousness in robots is predicated on the decision of accepting these beings as members of our linguistic community (407). This paper will reconstruct Putnam’s arguments in light of his conclusion as well as include my own contentions, engagements, and contributions to the necessary conditions for artificial consciousness.
Space & Time and Time & Space
This paper investigates the necessity of a dialogue between both the idealist and materialist views in offering a well-rounded inquiry into the nature of space and time. Utilizing Ibn Sina’s floating person thought experiment, the paper isolates the person’s intelligible experience from their empirical intuitions in order to determine whether a recognizable presentation of S&T will arise. The paper draws on Kant’s transcendental aesthetic to provide an idealist’s response, as well as poses challenges to Kant’s view by drawing on materialist arguments. The first kind of challenge considers the dialectic between idealist and materialist views to be crucial in distinguishing the subject from nature in-itself. The second challenge proposes that if we can derive shared phenomenological conditions that all beings participating in the spatio-temporal Universe must accede to, then the material context of existence might also be responsible for structuring a-priori intuitions of S&T.
Aristotle's Infinite Regress & Medieval Islamic Cosmology
Imagine a clock that duplicates itself for every second that elapses, such that every three seconds, three new clocks appear. If we observe the presence of clock number 88 and we know the cause of a new clock is the passage of one second, we know that there must have been a first cause in the series whose effects we observe in the 88th member of the series. If we are to trust the time on the face of the 88th clock we must inquire into whether the first clock was wound up to the correct time. If we don’t know the time on the first clock, this renders the time on the 88th unintelligible. Now the question remains of how this first clock was brought into existence. It must have been the effect of a prior clock’s falling second, but if there was no clock prior to the first, then no second could have elapsed and the first clock couldn’t have come into being. What created the first clock and its principle of duplicative change had to have initiated the series from outside the system, a Mover that isn’t a clock, otherwise, the series of clocks would regress to infinity. This paper will examine the cosmological and theological implications of Aristotle’s infinite regress argument by first inquiring into the nature of the first mover, whether both per se causal series and per accidens series must necessitate such a mover, and how this shapes Aristotlean and Neo-Platonist cosmological accounts of the universe’s eternality or generation in time.
An Exposition of Auguste Comte's Positive Philosophy
Auguste Comte’s Positive Philosophy is represented as the final stage in a society’s pursuit for knowledge, and an individual’s understanding of experience. The final stage in a tripartite methodology of diffusing one’s unified experience; from an internal absolute belief, to an elucidated metaphysical form, and into the observable realm of quantifiable laws. The first stage is a theological point of departure that is concerned with the epistemic pursuit of absolutes, the “origin and purpose” (Comte 1) of phenomena. We first attribute these phenomena to a supernatural instigator, a prime mover. In the metaphysical stage, we attempt to transition from a subjective story of experience into a verifiable story where the supernatural is assigned a causal yet still elusive role. The final and, according to Comte, definite state of positive philosophy tracks the causal mechanisms of these movers and studies their laws. I find Comte’s account on the stages of personal and collective knowledge to be poetic and strange. Poetic in that the transition from being a theologian in childhood and a “metaphysician in his [one’s] youth” (2) assumes epistemic humility as a necessary condition to preserving the consistency between our personal accounts of reality and our objective ones. Strange in that Comte views the path that knowledge follows before reaching the positive domain of fact, as a ladder with three steps rather than a cycle.