Philosophy Club Meeting
Please join us at our next meeting of the University of Hartford Philosophy Club this Wednesday, November 17th from 1 to 2 pm. in Room 420 Auerbach Hall at the University of Hartford. You can also join the meeting online by clicking on the WebEx link below.
Note: If the link above is not functional, then cut and paste it into your search line or URL line and hit “enter”.
Meeting Password: Alive CwqT3MBG33 Toll-free call-in number: 1-877-668-4493
Meeting Number (in case calling in): 171 628 0135
This week, Brian Skelly will present the topic:
Life and Non-Life: The Irreducible Bidirectionality of Science
Physics puts us in a position tempting us to try to explain living processes by means of non-living processes. Although all the fruits of such an endeavor are fascinating and important, so much is left out, with the elephant in the room among those most devoted to this pursuit being that things are only subject to physical explanation to the extent that they are locatable in space, whereas our thoughts are not locatable in space. Sure, the brain is a physical organ existing in space and loaded with physical events correlated with mental activity. But they are not identical to that activity. Mental events are not brain events. Correlation is not an identity relation.
When studying the correlations between mental activity and brain/body activity, we tend to lose sight of the onus we have to explain the innerness of the experience, not just the correlate physical events. Whatever neuronal or electrical activity that can be detected when I think of something is not my thought of that thing, but just something that comes along with the thought. We have good reason to infer that it is instrumental or perhaps even necessary to my having the concomitant thought, but it is not that thought.
Consider the thought of triangle: the triangle is not in anyone’s brain to be experienced, either from the outside or from within. Suppose, per absurdum, that the microscopic study of a part of the brain thought to be chiefly involved with geometric imagination revealed within a cell’s tissue the etched-out image of a tiny triangle. Would this give me any reason to claim that etching itself to be the person’s idea of triangle? Of course not! In the first place, one’s idea of a triangle is much more than an image; in the second place, the idea of triangle is not just of one single token, but of a type. Possibly that little etching could be instrumental in allowing or making it easier for me to think of triangles, but it itself could not be identical to one’s thought of a triangle.
Nor can we consider the thought of triangle to be identical to an interacting network of neuronal activities, for that is just brain activity of which we are only conscious, if at all, as pain or bodily feelings, not as a thought in our minds.
It is just as much the case, on the other hand, that when we are focused on the thoughts themselves, we tend to ignore if not be ignorant of their physical correlates. Does my brain feel a certain way when I am doing calculations? I suppose so, but any attention to the feeling ruins the thought. (See attached for full document).
An ongoing weekly tradition at the University since 2001, the University of Hartford Philosophy Club is a place where students, professors, and people from the community at large meet as peers. Sometimes presentations are given, followed by discussion. Other times, topics are hashed out by the whole group.
Presenters may be students, professors, or people from the community. Anyone can offer to present a topic. The mode of presentation may be as formal or informal as the presenter chooses.
Please be a part of us as we continue this great tradition live and online.
Brian D. Skelly, Philosophy
413-273-2273