PHI 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Category Mistake, Neurophysiology, Intentional Stance
12 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Intentionality of humans (and animals) is a product of causal features of the brain: certain brain processes are sufficient for intentionality. Brains and machines with internal causal powers equivalent to those of brains. They enable us to formulate/test hypothesis in a more rigorous and precise fashion. The appropriately programed computer is a mind in the sense that computers given the right programs can b said to understand and have cognitive states. Mindware: our thoughts, feelings, fears, beliefs, and intellect is cast as nothing, but the operation of the biological brain" the meat machine in our head. Mind is best studied from a kind of engineering perspective that reveals the nature of the machine that all the wet, white, gray, and sticky stuff happens to build . Follow the rules, you get the meaning for free. If the functional details of the system are preserved, the material composition of the system does not matter.
