The quest to understand the mind has motivated some of history's most profound thinkers. Only in our own time are we beginning to see the true complexity of this quest. Take a scientific search through the mind, review the role of philosophers is to sharpen our concepts, untangle the morass of questions, and systematically explore alternate approaches to thought.
Philosophy of Mind: Brains, Consciousness, and Thinking Machines
Use philosophical tools to examine the provocative and widely debated question of what the human mind is and how it is created by the brain.
Overview
About
Dr. Patrick Grim is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He graduated with highest honors in anthropology and philosophy from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was named a Fulbright Fellow to the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, from which he earned his B.Phil. He earned his Ph.D. from Boston University. Professor Grim is the recipient of several honors and awards. In addition to being named SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor, Dr. Grim has been awarded the President and Chancellor's awards for excellence in teaching and was elected to the Academy of Teachers and Scholars. The Weinberg Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan in 2006, Professor Grim has also held visiting fellowships at the Center for Complex Systems at Michigan and at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Professor Grim, author of The Incomplete Universe: Totality, Knowledge, and Truth; coauthor of The Philosophical Computer: Exploratory Essays in Philosophical Computer Modeling; and editor of the forthcoming Mind and Consciousness: 5 Questions, is widely published in scholarly journals. He is the founder and coeditor of 25 volumes of The Philosopher's Annual, an anthology of the best articles published in philosophy each year.
01: The Dream, the Brain, and the Machine
Professor Grim previews the range of ideas in the course with three examples: a dream of the philosopher René Descartes in 1619, the saga of Einstein's brain after his death, and a steam-driven computer designed in the mid-1800s.
33 min
02: The Mind-Body Problem
How does the mental relate to the physical? One response is Dualism, developed by Descartes, which sees the two as radically distinct.
30 min
03: Brains and Minds, Parts and Wholes
The strange case of Phineas Gage, who suffered a horrible brain injury in 1848, sheds light on the brain-mind connection.
31 min
04: The Inner Theater
Do we have an inner realm where representations of the world are displayed completely? A range of experiments seem to show that something much more complicated is going on.
30 min
05: Living in the Material World
You examine alternatives to Dualism—from the idea that the universe is purely mental (idealism) to the view that it is purely physical (materialism).
31 min
06: A Functional Approach to the Mind
Behaviorism and Functionalism take a radically different approach to the body and mind approach.
31 min
07: What Is It about Robots?
If Functionalism is right, a machine could have real perception, emotion, pleasure, and pain. Wouldn't it then also have ethical rights?
30 min
08: Body Image
Having conjectured how a body produces a mind, we approach the problem from the other side: how a mind produces a body.
31 min
09: Self-Identity and Other Minds
This lecture explores our concept of ourselves and other minds—not just human but animal—together with puzzling questions about self posed by "teletransporter" thought experiments and split-brain cases.
31 min
10: Perception—What Do You Really See?
What do we really see? What do we really hear? Empiricism argues that what we perceive are not things in the world but rather subjective sense data.
30 min
11: Perception—Intentionality and Evolution
The intentionalist view holds that perception is always "about" something. The evolutionary view sees perception as an evolved grab bag of tricks.
31 min
12: A Mind in the World
In order to understand the mind, we have to understand the environment in which it functions—the mind in the world.
31 min
13: A History of Smart Machines
You trace the fascinating stories of computing machines—from the Antikythera device of 100 BCE, to legends of mechanical calculating heads in the Middle Ages, to Charles Babbage's designs for steam-driven computers in the 1840s.
32 min
14: Intelligence and IQ
This lecture looks at attempts to measure intelligence.
31 min
15: Artificial Intelligence
In 1950, Alan Turing proposed a test for determining whether a machine displays human intelligence, predicting that such a thinking machine would exist by 2000.
30 min
16: Brains and Computers
Computers use binary digits and logic gates. By contrast, brains are built of neurons, which are far more complex. While we know how computers work, we are ignorant of brain function on many levels.
30 min
17: Attacks on Artificial Intelligence
The very concept of artificial intelligence has serious critics, including Hubert Dreyfus and John Searle. The latter has a powerful argument called the "Chinese room," which this lecture considers from both sides of the debate.
31 min
18: Do We Have Free Will?
Can our actions be free? The compatibilist view holds that free will, when properly understood, is a natural part of a causal universe.
31 min
19: Seeing and Believing
This lecture explores how our conscious experience is shaped by background beliefs and expectations. This issue raises an important question for our justice system: Is eyewitness testimony reliable?
31 min
20: Mysteries of Color
Is color real or is it something that exists only in the mind? You explore this question with thought experiments and insights.
31 min
21: The Hard Problem of Consciousness
If there is a defining problem in philosophy of mind today, it is the problem of accounting for our subjective experience. David Chalmers calls this the "hard problem of consciousness."
31 min
22: The Conscious Brain-2½ Physical Theories
How are we to understand conscious experience? This lecture considers two attempts to explain consciousness in terms of physical processes in the brain.
31 min
23: The HOT Theory and Antitheories
The philosopher David Rosenthal identifies consciousness with "higher-order thoughts"—HOT. You also survey antitheories.
32 min
24: What We Know and What We Don't Know
Professor Grim reviews the high points of the course, focusing on questions raised by Lecture 1.
34 min
