Experiences are Objects. Towards a Mind-object Identity Theory
Abstract
Abstract: Traditional mind-body identity theories maintain that consciousness is identical with neural activity. Consider an alternative identity theory – namely, a mind-object identity theory of consciousness (OBJECTBOUND). I suggest to take into consideration whether one’s consciousness might be identical with the external object. The hypothesis is that, when I perceive a yellow banana, the thing that is one and the same with my consciousness of the yellow banana is the very yellow banana one can grab and eat, rather than the neural processes triggered by the banana. The bottom line is that one’s conscious experience of an object is the object one experiences. First, I outline the main hypothesis and the relation between mind, body, and object. Eventually, I address a series of traditional obstacles such as hallucinations, illusions, and commonsensical assumptions.
Keywords: Identity Theory; Mind/Body Problem; Consciousness; Hallucinations; Illusions
Le esperienze sono oggetti. Verso una teoria dell’identità della mente in quanto oggetto
Riassunto: Le teorie dell’identità tra mente e corpo di tipo tradizionale hanno affermato una relazione di identità tra coscienza e attività neurale. Si consideri una teoria dell’identità di carattere alternativo – propriamente una teoria dell’identità che intenda la coscienza come un oggetto (OBJECTBOUND). Suggerisco di considerare la possibilità che la coscienza di qualcuno possa essere trattata come identica a un oggetto del mondo esterno. Sulla base di questa ipotesi, quando percepisco una banana gialla, ciò che coincide con la mia coscienza della banana gialla è proprio la banana gialla che si può prendere e mangiare, piuttosto che il processo neurale innescato dalla banana. In definitiva l’esperienza cosciente di un oggetto che ciascuno ha è l’oggetto che si esperisce. In una prima parte, procederò con il delineare l’ipotesi principale e la relazione tra mente, corpo e oggetto. Successivamente cercherò di risolvere alcuni problemi di tipo tradizionale, quali le allucinazioni, le illusioni e gli assunti di senso comune.
Parole chiave: Teoria dell’identità; Problema mente/corpo; Coscienza; Allucinazioni; Illusioni
Parole chiave
Full Text
PDFRiferimenti bibliografici
ARMSTRONG, D. (1968), A Materialist Theory of Mind, Routledge, London.
BLOCK, N. (2005), Review of Alva Noë’s “Action in Perception”. In: «The Journal of Philosophy», vol. CII, n. 5, 2005, pp. 259-272.
BLOCK, N. (2007), Consciousness, Accessibility, and the Mesh between Psychology and Neuroscience. In: «Behavioral and Brain Sciences», vol. XXX, n. 5-6, pp. 481-499.
BRENTANO, F. (1874), Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Hahn, Leipzig.
BREWER, B. (2011), Perception and its Objects, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
BYRNE, A., LOGUE, H. (2009), Disjunctivism. Contemporary Readings, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA).
CHALMERS, D.J. (1996), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford University Press, New York.
CHANGEUX, J.-P. (2004), Clarifying Consciousness. In: «Nature», vol. CDXXVIII, pp. 603-604.
CHELLA, A., MANZOTTI, R. (2012), AGI and Machine Consciousness. In: «Theoretical Foundations of Artificial General Intelligence», vol. IV, pp. 263-282.
CRICK, F., KOCH, C. (1998), Consciousness and Neuroscience. In: «Cerebral Cortex», vol. VIII, n. 2, pp. 92-107.
DEHAENE, S. (2014), Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts, Penguin Books, London.
DENNETT, D.C. (1978), Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology, Bradford Books, Montgomery.
FFYTCHE, D.H. (2005), Visual Hallucinations: Charles Bonnet Syndrome. In: «Current Psychiatry Reports», vol. VII, n. 3, pp. 168-179.
GALILEI, G. (1623/1957), The Assayer. In: S. DRAKE (ed.), Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Doubleday & Co., New York, pp. 231-280.
GOLDSTEIN, B.E. (2010), Sensation and Perception, Cengage, Wadsworth (AUS).
HARMAN, G. (1990), The Intrinsic Quality of Experience. In: «Philosophical Perspectives», vol. IV, pp. 31-52.
HEDGES, T.R. (2007), Charles Bonnet, his Life, and his Syndrome. In: «Survey of Ophthalmology», LII, n. 1, pp. 111-114.
HUBEL, D.H., WIESEL, T.N. (2004), Brain and Visual Perception: The Story of a 25-Year Collaboration, Oxford University Press, New York.
HUDSON, H. (2003), Alexander’ s Dicta and Merricks’ Dictum. In: «Topoi», vol. XXII, n. 2, pp. 173-182.
HUROVITZ, C.S., DUNN, S., DOMHOFF, G.W., FISS, H. (1999), The Dreams of Blind Men and Women: A Replication and Extension of Previous Findings. In: «Dreaming», vol. IX, n. 2-3, pp. 183-193.
KERR, N.H., DOMHOFF, W.G. (2004), Do the Blind Literally “See” in Their Dreams? A Critique of a Recent Claim That They Do. In: «Dreaming», vol. XIV, n. 4, pp. 230-233
KIM, J. (1995), Dretske’s Qualia Externalism. In: «Philosophical Issues», vol. VII, pp. 159-165.
KIM, J. (19989 Mind in a Physical World, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA).
KOCH, C. (2004), The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach, Roberts, Company Publishers, Englewood (COL).
LAMME, V.A.F. (2003), Why Visual Attention and Awareness are Different. In: «Trends in Cognitive Sciences», vol. VII, n. 1, pp.12-19.
LAMME, V.A.F. (2006), Towards a True Neural Stance on Consciousness. In: «Trends in Cognitive Sciences», vol. X, n. 11, pp. 494-501.
LLINÀS, R. (2001), I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA).
MACPHERSON, F. (2014), The Philosophy and Psychology of Hallucination: An Introduction. In: F. MACPHERSON, D. PLATCHIAS (eds.), Hallucination. Philosophy and Psychology, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA), pp. 1-38.
MANZOTTI, R. (2006), A Process Oriented View of Conscious Perception. In: «Journal of Consciousness Studies», vol. XIII, n. 6, pp. 7-41.
MANZOTTI, R. (2009), No Time, No Wholes: A Temporal and Causal-Oriented Approach to the Ontology of Wholes. In: «Axiomathes», vol. XIX, n. 2, pp. 193-214;
MANZOTTI, R., JESCHKE, S. (2016) A Causal Foundation for Consciousness in Biological and Artificial Agents. In: «Cognitive Systems Research» (forthcoming).
MANZOTTI, R., MODERATO, P. (2010), Is Neuroscience the Forthcoming “Mindscience”?. In: «Behaviour and Philosophy», vol. XXXVIII, n. 1, pp. 1-28.
MERRICKS, T. (2001), Objects and Persons, Oxford Clarendon Press, Oxford.
NAGEL, T. (1974), What is it like to be a Bat?. In: «The Philosophical Review», vol. IV, n. 4, pp.435-450.
O’REGAN, K. (1992), Solving the Real Mysteries of Visual Perception: The World as an Outside Memory. In: «Canadian Journal of Psychology», vol. XLVI, n. 3, pp. 461-488.
PALMER, S.E. (1999), Vision Science. Photons to Phenomenology, MIT AI-Lab, Cambridge (MA).
PENFIELD, W. (1972), The Electrode, the Brain and the Mind. In: «Zeitschrift für Neurologie», vol. CCI, n. 4, pp. 297-309.
PENFIELD, W., RASMUSSEN, T. (1950), The Cerebral Cortex of Man. A Clinical Study of Localization of Function, MacMillan Company, New York.
PLACE, U.T. (1956), Is Consciousness a Brain Process?. In: «The British Journal of Psychology», vol. XLVII, pp.44-50.
PRINZ, J.J. (2005), Is Consciousness Embodied?. In: P. ROBBINS, M. AYDEDE (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 419-437.
REES, G., KREIMAN, G., KOCH, C. (2002), Neural Correlates of Consciousness in Humans. In: «Nature Reviews Neuroscience», vol. III, n. 4, pp. 261-270.
REICHENBACH, H. (1971), The Direction of Time, University of California Press, Berkeley.
REVONSUO, A. (2000), Prospects for a Scientific Research Programme on Consciousness, in: T. METZINGER (ed.), Neural Correlates of Consciousness, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA), pp. 56-75.
REVONSUO, A. (2010), Consciousness. The Science of Subjectivity, Psychology Press, Hove.
REVONSUO, A., SALMIVALLI, C. (1995), A Content Analysis of Bizarre Elements in Dreams. In: «Dreaming», vol. V, n. 3, pp. 169-187.
SCHWITZGEBEL, E., HUANG, C., ZHOU, Y. (2006), Do we Dream in Color? Cultural Variations and Skepticism. In: «Dreaming», vol. XVI, n. 1, pp. 36-42.
SEARLE, J.R. (1984), Minds, Brains, and Science, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA).
SETH, A.K., IZHIKEVICH, E., REEKE, G.N., EDELMAN, G.M. (2006), Theories and Measures of Consciousness: An Extended Framework. In: «Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America», vol. CIII, n. 28, pp.10799-10804.
SMART, J.J.C. (1959), Sensations and Brain Processes. In: «The Philosophical Review», vol. LXVIII, n. 2, pp.141-156.
TEUNISSE, R.J., CRUYSBERG, J.R., HOEFNAGELS, W.H., VERBEEK, A.L., ZITMAN, F.G. (1996), Visual Hallucinations in Psychologically Normal Charles Bonnet’s Syndrome People. In: «The Lancet», vol. CCCXLVII, pp. 794-797.
TONONI, G. (2004), An Information Integration Theory of Consciousness. In: «BMC Neuroscience», vol. V, n. 42, pp. 1-22.
TONONI, G., KOCH, C. (2008), The Neural Correlates of Consciousness: An Update. In: «Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences», vol. MCXXIV, pp. 239-261.
TYE, M. (2002), Representationalism and the Transparency of Experience. In: «Noûs», vol. XXXVI, n. 1, pp.137-151.
UTTAL, W.R. (2001), The New Phrenology: The Limits of Localizing Cognitive Processes in the Brain, MIT Press, Boston.
ZEKI, S. (2003), The Disunity of Consciousness. In: «Trends in Cognitive Sciences», vol. VII, n. 5, pp. 214-218.
ZEKI, S., AGLIOTI, S., MCKEEFRY, D., BERLUCCHI, G. (1999), The Neurological Basis of Conscious Color Perception in a Blind Patient. In: «Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America», XCVI, n. 24, pp. 14124-14129.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4453/rifp.2016.0003
Copyright (c) 2016 Riccardo Manzotti
URLdella licenza: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
Rivista internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia - ISSN: 2039-4667 (print) - E-ISSN: 2239-2629 (online)
Registrazione al Tribunale di Milano n. 634 del 26-11-2010 - Direttore Responsabile: Aurelia Delfino
Web provider Aruba spa - Loc. Palazzetto, 4 - 52011 Bibbiena (AR) - P.IVA 01573850516 - C.F. e R.I./AR 04552920482
Dove non diversamente specificato, i contenuti di Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia sono distribuiti con Licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione 4.0 Internazionale.