Substance, Reality, and Distinctness

Descartes claims that God is a substance and that mind and body are two different and separable substances. This paper provides some background that renders these claims intelligible. For Descartes, that something is real means that it can exist in separation, and something is a substance if it does not depend on other substances for its existence. Further, separable objects are correlates of distinct ideas, since an idea is distinct (in an objective sense) if its object may be easily and clearly separated from everything that is not its object. It follows that if our idea of God is our most distinct idea, as Descartes claims, God must be a substance in the Cartesian sense of this term. Second, if we can have an idea of a thinking subject that does not in any sense refer to bodily things, and if bodily things are substances, then mind and body must be two different substances

The mechanism of the Einstellung (set) effect: A pervasive source of cognitive bias

Copyright @ The Authors 2010The eye movements of expert players trying to solve a chess problem show that the first idea that comes to mind directs attention towards sources of information consistent with itself and away from inconsistent information. This bias continues unconsciously even when the player believes he is looking for alternatives. The result is that alternatives to the first idea are ignored. This mechanism for biasing attention ensures a speedy response in familiar situations but it can lead to errors when the first thought that comes to mind is not appropriate. We propose that this mechanism is the source of many cognitive biases from phenomena in problem solving and reasoning, to perceptual errors and failures in memory

Cartesian critters can't remember

Descartes held the following view of declarative memory: to remember is to reconstruct an idea that you intellectually recognize as a reconstruction. Descartes countenanced two overarching varieties of declarative memory. To have an intellectual memory is to intellectually reconstruct a universal idea that you recognize as a reconstruction, and to have a sensory memory is to neurophysiologically reconstruct a particular idea that you recognize as a reconstruction. Sensory remembering is thus a capacity of neither ghosts nor machines, but only of human beings qua mind-body unions. This interpretation unifies Descartes’s various remarks (and conspicuous silences) about remembering, from the 1628 Rules for the Direction of the Mind through the suppressed-in-1633 Treatise of Man to the 1649 Passions of the Soul. It also rebuts a prevailing thesis in the current secondary literature—that Cartesian critters can remember—while incorporating the textual evidence for that thesis—Descartes’s detailed descriptions of the corporeal mechanisms that construct sensory memories

Time-Entanglement Between Mind and Matter

This contribution explores Wolfgang Pauli's idea that mind and matter are complementary aspects of the same reality. We adopt the working hypothesis that there is an undivided timeless primordial reality (the primordial "one world''). Breaking its symmetry, we obtain a contextual description of the holistic reality in terms of two categorically different domains, one tensed and the other tenseless. The tensed domain includes, in addition to tensed time, nonmaterial processes and mental events. The tenseless domain refers to matter and physical energy. This concept implies that mind cannot be reduced to matter, and that matter cannot be reduced to mind. The non-Boolean logical framework of modern quantum theory is general enough to implement this idea. Time is not taken to be an a priori concept, but an archetypal acausal order is assumed which can be represented by a one-parameter group of automorphisms, generating a time operator which parametrizes all processes, whether material or nonmaterial. The time-reversal symmetry is broken in the nonmaterial domain, resulting in a universal direction of time for the material domain as well

Developing a Formal Model for Mind Maps

Mind map is a graphical technique, which is used to represent words, concepts, tasks or other connected items or arranged around central topic or idea. Mind maps are widely used, therefore exist plenty of software programs to create or edit them, while there is none format for the model representation, neither a standard format. This paper presents and effort to propose a formal mind map model aiming to describe the structure, content, semantics and social connections. The structure describes the basic mind map graph consisted of a node set, an edge set, a cloud set and a graphical connections set. The content includes the set of the texts and objects linked to the nodes. The social connections are the mind maps of other users, which form the neighborhood of the mind map owner in a social networking system. Finally, the mind map semantics is any true logic connection between mind map textual parts and a concept. Each of these elements of the model is formally described building the suggested mind map model. Its establishment will support the application of algorithms and methods towards their information extraction

Locke's Criterion for the Reality of Ideas: Unambiguous but Untenable

The paper argues against the claim held, e.g., by Leibniz, that Locke employs a double standard for determining whether an object before the mind (i.e., an idea) is real. Using Locke's ectype-archetype distinction it is shown that this charge is the result of confusing Locke's criterion of reality with its application. Depending on whether it applies to a simple, substance or mode idea, the criterion works out differently. Next it is argued that although Locke maintains only a single criterion, this criterion is untenable, since it fails to properly distinguish real from fantastical ideas

Beauty (Essay 8 of Seeing: When Art and Faith Intersect)

Excerpt: Beauty as a concept has given twentieth century writers, especially art critics and art historians, a great deal of difficulty. Why is this so?Answering would take several volumes--! will settle for less. The traditional idea of beauty has all the trappings of a universal concept. For Plato, one of the earliest and most prominent supporters of such universals, beauty, along with other concepts, had the mind of the creator as its source. For much of Christianity\u27s existence Plato\u27s idea of beauty was accepted--with some alterations. For one, the creator became Yahweh, creator of the universe. Secondly, though spiritual beauty might inhabit physical beauty, the reverse was not necessarily the case

Internal networks revisited: Telepathy meets technology

This conference paper is available to download from the publisher’s website at the link below.This is speculative paper that explores the paradigm-shifting concept of initiating a mind/body to computer communication or interaction, it is not intended necessarily a prescriptive work. This idea pushes the boundaries of accepted conventional science, in terms of human versus computer capabilities and the potential for these capabilities to work in tandem, through means currently accepted only in science fiction. This paper takes the recent revelations in physics, psychology and neuroscience then couples them with the idea of human computer interaction and wireless communication to envision experiential means of connecting human consciousness with technology