After spending a hot Nashville afternoon poolside with Oliver Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat," I haven't been able to stop musing about the possible ways in which dreams can provide important information. I'm not talking about a Freudian analysis of dreams, but rather the possibility of dreams revealing aspects of the way our minds work. "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" is about a clinical patient, Dr. P, who has a certain type of visual aphasia that caused him to make very odd mistakes, including mistaking his foot for a shoe and his wife for a hat. As Dr. P got older this visual aphasia worsened. I would highly recommend reading the article as it is a short read and is full of very interesting information. An aspect of this article that interested me was that Dr. P's dreams ceased to have an visual component as his visual aphasia worsened, but his dreams still had content expressed in other ways. Patients with similar problems have reported image-less dreams as well. It is also worth mentioning that Dr. P was a musical genius and never lost his musical abilities or other cognitive abilities such as his ability to play a mean game of chess.
Some studies in psychology have suggested that different people learn differently; there are "visual learners" and "auditory learners," etc. etc. etc. Different peoples' ways of seeing the world are all very different. For me, personally, my dreams have never had striking visual components to them. They are almost always based on emotion and physical sensation. Upon further reflection, I really am not a very "visual" person (thus being a philosophy major fits, I suppose!). There seems to be a connection to the way a dreams' content is presented and the neurophysiology of the mind. Further study into this area would be very interesting and also very fruitful for clinical psychology, neurology and philosophy of mind.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Alyssa as an Emergentist
I know I've been gone for quite some time-- I got wrapped up in graduating from Belmont University and all that comes with that (*ahem, finals, ahem*). I did, however, want to follow up on my last post regarding consciousness as an emergent property. I am fairly convinced this theory has the most potential to explain the appearance of the explanatory gap (named by Joseph Levine; this is the gap that appears to exist because of the apparent failure of mental and physiological statements to fully explain the nature of consciousness). In a recent paper I wrote, I argue that the highly overlooked view of emergentism, if further researched, may provide a more satisfying explanation of the current appearance of the explanatory gap.
Most of my research focused on the British emergentist philosophers in the early 1900s, in specific C.D. Broad and Samuel Alexander. The type of emergentism I propose be further studied in relation to the explanatory gap is the emergentism Samuel Alexander presents; that is, a quality that emerges from the physiological but is not reducible to the physiological and a quality that supervenes on physiological processes. This emergence must also happen with necessity, as I disagree with David Chalmers’ belief that philosophical zombies are logically possible. Given that the constituents are the same, the same emergent qualities will arise; this view is consistent with the observations of chemical reactions by chemists. The emergent qualities are also not predictable a priori. Since emergent properties are repeatedly found on lower physiological levels, it seems highly probable that emergence also occurs elsewhere in nature on higher and on lower levels. I found a very interesting excerpt from Introduction to "Consciousness Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, and Philosophy" by Arne Dietrich:
A common argument against studying consciousness as an emergent quality is based upon the idea that reactions among chemicals in chemistry are fundamentally different from the realm of brain and consciousness. In a sense, consciousness has very different qualities than silver chloride and we experience these qualities from an intimate first-person point of view. The fact that the emergent qualities themselves are different, however, does not imply that the physiological laws and processes that produce these qualities differ; this result merely shows that the constituents that form these emergent qualities are different.
I'm hoping to further study consciousness as an emergent property this coming year in CSU Long Beach's philosophy M.A. program-- it seems like it has so much potential. I'm definitely ready to be back in class and am looking forward to everything I've heard grad school will be :-)
Cheers!
Most of my research focused on the British emergentist philosophers in the early 1900s, in specific C.D. Broad and Samuel Alexander. The type of emergentism I propose be further studied in relation to the explanatory gap is the emergentism Samuel Alexander presents; that is, a quality that emerges from the physiological but is not reducible to the physiological and a quality that supervenes on physiological processes. This emergence must also happen with necessity, as I disagree with David Chalmers’ belief that philosophical zombies are logically possible. Given that the constituents are the same, the same emergent qualities will arise; this view is consistent with the observations of chemical reactions by chemists. The emergent qualities are also not predictable a priori. Since emergent properties are repeatedly found on lower physiological levels, it seems highly probable that emergence also occurs elsewhere in nature on higher and on lower levels. I found a very interesting excerpt from Introduction to "Consciousness Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, and Philosophy" by Arne Dietrich:
An example of chaos theory is found in amoebae (slime molds): “When food is short this simplest of creatures undergoes what must be one of the most spectacular spontaneous self-organizations in nature. Individual amoebas cluster into colonies and metamorphize into one big, continuous sheet of slime. Then, in a radical transformation, those colonies differentiate into different functional components so that the newly restructured slime mold will behave as a single, larger animal. Self-organization from chaos to order! …From above, the new slime looks stable and coordinated. But under this macrostructure is slime mayhem. The closer you zoom in, the more radical individual amoebas’ behavior bifurcate until, in the close-ups of an electron microscope, a higher-order stability seems totally out of the question. But there it is: differentiated slime. …Order out of chaos, as long as you look at it standing back, way back. …With this in mind it is easier to ponder …how a hundred-billion-plus mindless units can make up a mind. Note that this is a form of global coherence emerging from distributed components. Such binding of individual activities into stable, large-scale phenomena occurs frequently in nature and can be explained without recourse to quantum weirdness. The unity of consciousness may simply arise naturally from the fact that the brain is a nonlinear system” (Dietrich 78-79).
A common argument against studying consciousness as an emergent quality is based upon the idea that reactions among chemicals in chemistry are fundamentally different from the realm of brain and consciousness. In a sense, consciousness has very different qualities than silver chloride and we experience these qualities from an intimate first-person point of view. The fact that the emergent qualities themselves are different, however, does not imply that the physiological laws and processes that produce these qualities differ; this result merely shows that the constituents that form these emergent qualities are different.
I'm hoping to further study consciousness as an emergent property this coming year in CSU Long Beach's philosophy M.A. program-- it seems like it has so much potential. I'm definitely ready to be back in class and am looking forward to everything I've heard grad school will be :-)
Cheers!
Monday, March 29, 2010
Grad School
I have just officially accepted the offer from California State University, Long Beach. I will be joining their philosophy M.A. program in the fall with a graduate assistantship and am extremely excited. I'm hoping to pursue studies of feminism, ethics and metaphysics, specifically emergentism. I also have just finished my paper on consciousness as an emergent property, which I will be summarizing on this blog in the near future.
Cheers to grad school!
Cheers to grad school!
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Interpreting Plato's "Lysis"
I recently wrote a paper entitled "What Really Happened in the Lysis," which will soon be published in Kennesaw State University's OtherWise philosophical journal. I don't want to post the entire paper on this blog but, as promised in my first entry, I did want to comment on it. My overall thesis of the paper was that, while many scholars' interpretations of the Lysis focus on the conversations between Socrates and Menexenus and Lysis, I argue that the opening and closing scenes, as well as the actual events that occur within the Lysis, relayed to the reader through Socrates’ narration, reveal an overlooked aspect of Plato's philosophy regarding friendship that the dialectical conversation tends to eclipse.
In the paper I reviewed the following scholars' interpretations of the Lysis: David Bolotin, Christopher Planeaux, Terry Penner, Christopher Rowe and Hans-Georg Gadamer. I found the views of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Christopher Planeaux to be the most satisfactory interpretations of the sources I reviewed, as they both took an important step away from the typical analysis of the Lysis by detecting the layer of ergon, or “doing” itself. Gadamer, though, concludes that this kind of showing by example, or deed, failed to work. I argue that Plato's use of ergon was successful. Planeaux concludes that Socrates was an unreliable narrator, which I also argue against.
The rest of my paper consists of a close reading of the Lysis with analytic commentary on select passages and events in the dialogue. The Lysis ends with Socrates saying: "Now we’ve done it, Lysis and Menexenus—made fools of ourselves, I, an old man, and you as well. These people will go away saying that we are friends of one another—for I count myself in with you—but what a friend is we have not yet been able to find out." I interpret this to mean that, during the time in which they were engaged in philosophical discourse, a friendship had emerged between them. Although the dialogue's attempt to come to a verbal definition of friendship fails (as the dialogue ends in aporia), the dialogue is successful on a pragmatic level, as Hippothales finds delight and relief, having found a way to deal with his passionate feelings toward Lysis, and friendships have been formed between both Socrates and Lysis as well as Socrates and Menexenus. This, I argue, is how Socrates shows (not tells) his reader what being a friend means and how friendships are formed.
While writing this paper I, at times, felt like I was performing a literary analysis and was not "doing" philosophy. Hindsight, I realize that philosophy can sometimes (especially with authors such as Plato) be found within literature. This prompted me to wonder how much contemporary literature exists that has great philosophical value. Perhaps there are literary works hidden away within the Literature shelves of the library that I walk right past as I hustle to the philosophy section. Perhaps the lines of philosophy blur into other subjects more than I had initially realized.
If anyone reading this has any reading recommendations in the realm of literature that might fall into this category, let me know.
In the paper I reviewed the following scholars' interpretations of the Lysis: David Bolotin, Christopher Planeaux, Terry Penner, Christopher Rowe and Hans-Georg Gadamer. I found the views of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Christopher Planeaux to be the most satisfactory interpretations of the sources I reviewed, as they both took an important step away from the typical analysis of the Lysis by detecting the layer of ergon, or “doing” itself. Gadamer, though, concludes that this kind of showing by example, or deed, failed to work. I argue that Plato's use of ergon was successful. Planeaux concludes that Socrates was an unreliable narrator, which I also argue against.
The rest of my paper consists of a close reading of the Lysis with analytic commentary on select passages and events in the dialogue. The Lysis ends with Socrates saying: "Now we’ve done it, Lysis and Menexenus—made fools of ourselves, I, an old man, and you as well. These people will go away saying that we are friends of one another—for I count myself in with you—but what a friend is we have not yet been able to find out." I interpret this to mean that, during the time in which they were engaged in philosophical discourse, a friendship had emerged between them. Although the dialogue's attempt to come to a verbal definition of friendship fails (as the dialogue ends in aporia), the dialogue is successful on a pragmatic level, as Hippothales finds delight and relief, having found a way to deal with his passionate feelings toward Lysis, and friendships have been formed between both Socrates and Lysis as well as Socrates and Menexenus. This, I argue, is how Socrates shows (not tells) his reader what being a friend means and how friendships are formed.
While writing this paper I, at times, felt like I was performing a literary analysis and was not "doing" philosophy. Hindsight, I realize that philosophy can sometimes (especially with authors such as Plato) be found within literature. This prompted me to wonder how much contemporary literature exists that has great philosophical value. Perhaps there are literary works hidden away within the Literature shelves of the library that I walk right past as I hustle to the philosophy section. Perhaps the lines of philosophy blur into other subjects more than I had initially realized.
If anyone reading this has any reading recommendations in the realm of literature that might fall into this category, let me know.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
A Philosophy Blog?
This is my first attempt at a blog, but I thought it would be worth making one as it would provide a place for me to write down all of my random thoughts and musings about philosophy topics and, hopefully, further sort through them. My current academic interests are metaphysics, especially emergentism, Plato, and aesthetics. That being said, I often find myself discussing other branches of philosophy over coffee with friends; this is the place I plan to use to sort through those kinds of stray thoughts. I have just finished a paper on Plato's 'Lysis' and plan to comment on that in the near future.
My final thought for my introductory blog post has to do with the name of this blog, 'Philosophy From Room 312.' Most of my philosophy classes at Belmont University are held in Fidelity Hall, Room 312. Over the past 3 1/2 years I have begun to closely relate the idea of challenging and productive intellectual philosophical discussion with Room 312 (although, in reality, it has nothing to do with the room and everything to do with my brilliant professors and peers). I'm currently applying to graduate schools in order to pursue, eventually, a Ph.D. in philosophy. I know, though, that this department will always hold a special place in my heart; I couldn't ask for a better education (in the fullest sense of the word) than Belmont's philosophy department has given me. This is why I chose this name for my blog.
(As a side note, anything I write in this blog does not actually come from room 312 and, like all those television networks say before they air a program, it does not necessarily express the opinions of my peers or my department. Obviously.)
My final thought for my introductory blog post has to do with the name of this blog, 'Philosophy From Room 312.' Most of my philosophy classes at Belmont University are held in Fidelity Hall, Room 312. Over the past 3 1/2 years I have begun to closely relate the idea of challenging and productive intellectual philosophical discussion with Room 312 (although, in reality, it has nothing to do with the room and everything to do with my brilliant professors and peers). I'm currently applying to graduate schools in order to pursue, eventually, a Ph.D. in philosophy. I know, though, that this department will always hold a special place in my heart; I couldn't ask for a better education (in the fullest sense of the word) than Belmont's philosophy department has given me. This is why I chose this name for my blog.
(As a side note, anything I write in this blog does not actually come from room 312 and, like all those television networks say before they air a program, it does not necessarily express the opinions of my peers or my department. Obviously.)
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