1.
Philosophy of mind
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Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind. The mind–body problem is an issue in philosophy of mind, although other issues are addressed, such as the hard problem of consciousness. Dualism and monism are the two schools of thought on the mind–body problem, although nuanced views have arisen that do not fit one or the other category neatly. Dualism is seen even in the Eastern tradition, in the Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy, and Plato, monism is the position that mind and body are not ontologically distinct kinds of entities. This view was first advocated in Western philosophy by Parmenides in the 5th century BC and was later espoused by the 17th century rationalist Baruch Spinoza. Physicalists argue that only entities postulated by physical theory exist, physicalists maintain various positions on the prospects of reducing mental properties to physical properties, and the ontological status of such mental properties remains unclear. Idealists maintain that the mind is all that exists and that the world is either mental itself. The most common monisms in the 20th and 21st centuries have all been variations of physicalism, these positions include behaviorism, most modern philosophers of mind adopt either a reductive or non-reductive physicalist position, maintaining in their different ways that the mind is not something separate from the body. These approaches have been influential in the sciences, especially in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionary psychology. Reductive physicalists assert that all states and properties will eventually be explained by scientific accounts of physiological processes and states. Continued neuroscientific progress has helped to some of these issues, however. Modern philosophers of mind continue to ask how the subjective qualities, the mind–body problem concerns the explanation of the relationship that exists between minds, or mental processes, and bodily states or processes. The main aim of working in this area is to determine the nature of the mind and mental states/processes. Someones desire for a slice of pizza, for example, will tend to cause that person to move his or her body in a specific manner and in a specific direction to obtain what he or she wants. The question, then, is how it can be possible for conscious experiences to arise out of a lump of gray matter endowed with nothing, a related problem is how someones propositional attitudes cause that individuals neurons to fire and his muscles to contract. These comprise some of the puzzles that have confronted epistemologists and philosophers of mind from at least the time of René Descartes, Dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter. It begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, One of the earliest known formulations of mind–body dualism was expressed in the eastern Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy, which divided the world into purusha and prakriti. Specifically, the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali presents an approach to the nature of the mind
2.
Baruch Spinoza
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Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Sephardi/Portuguese origin. Spinozas magnum opus, Ethics, was published posthumously in 1677, the work opposed René Descartes philosophy on mind–body dualism, and earned Spinoza recognition as one of Western philosophys most important thinkers. In the Ethics, Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, hegel said, You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all. His philosophical accomplishments and moral character prompted 20th-century philosopher Gilles Deleuze to name him the prince of philosophers, Spinozas given name, which means Blessed, varies among different languages. In Hebrew, it is written ברוך שפינוזה, in Portuguese, hes called Benedito Bento de Espinosa and in Latin, Benedictus de Spinoza. Spinoza was raised in a Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam and he developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine. Jewish religious authorities issued a herem against him, causing him to be shunned by Jewish society at age 23. His books were later put on the Catholic Churchs Index of Forbidden Books. Spinoza lived a simple life as a lens grinder, turning down rewards and honours throughout his life. He died at the age of 44 allegedly of a lung illness and he is buried in the churchyard of the Christian Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague. The Spinoza family probably had its origins in Espinosa de los Monteros, near Burgos, or in Espinosa de Cerrato, near Palencia, the family was expelled from Spain in 1492 and fled to Portugal. Portugal compelled them to convert to Catholicism in 1498, attracted by the Decree of Toleration issued in 1579 by the Union of Utrecht, Portuguese conversos first sailed to Amsterdam in 1593 and promptly reconverted to Judaism. In 1598 permission was granted to build a synagogue, and in 1615 an ordinance for the admission, as a community of exiles, the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam were highly proud of their identity. Spinozas father was born roughly a century after this conversion in the small Portuguese city of Vidigueira. When Spinozas father was still a child, Spinozas grandfather, Isaac de Spinoza and they were expelled in 1615 and moved to Rotterdam, where Isaac died in 1627. Spinozas father, Miguel, and his uncle, Manuel, then moved to Amsterdam where they resumed the practice of Judaism, Miguel was a successful merchant and became a warden of the synagogue and of the Amsterdam Jewish school. He buried three wives and three of his six children died before reaching adulthood, Amsterdam and Rotterdam operated as important cosmopolitan centres where merchant ships from many parts of the world brought people of various customs and beliefs. This flourishing commercial activity encouraged a relatively tolerant of the play of new ideas
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David Hume
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David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of radical philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. Humes empiricist approach to philosophy places him with John Locke, Francis Bacon, beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume strove to create a total naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Humes compatibilist theory of free will takes causal determinism as fully compatible with human freedom, Kant himself credited Hume as the spur to his philosophical thought who had awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers. Arthur Schopenhauer once declared there is more to be learned from each page of David Hume than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart. Hume is thus regarded as a pivotal figure in the history of philosophical thought. David Hume was the second of two born to Joseph Home of Ninewells, an advocate, and his wife The Hon. Katherine. He was born on 26 April 1711 in a tenement on the side of the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh. Humes father died when Hume was a child, just after his birthday, and he was raised by his mother. He changed the spelling of his name in 1734, because of the fact that his surname Home, throughout his life Hume, who never married, spent time occasionally at his family home at Ninewells in Berwickshire, which had belonged to his family since the sixteenth century. His finances as a man were very slender. His family was not rich and, as a younger son and he was therefore forced to make a living somehow. Hume attended the University of Edinburgh at the early age of twelve at a time when fourteen was normal. He had little respect for the professors of his time, telling a friend in 1735 that there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books. Aged around 18, he made a discovery that opened up to him a new Scene of Thought. He did not recount what this scene was, and commentators have offered a variety of speculations, due to this inspiration, Hume set out to spend a minimum of ten years reading and writing. He soon came to the verge of a breakdown, suffering from what a doctor diagnosed as the Disease of the Learned. Hume wrote that it started with a coldness, which he attributed to a Laziness of Temper, later, some scurvy spots broke out on his fingers. This was what persuaded Humes physician to make his diagnosis, Hume wrote that he went under a Course of Bitters and Anti-Hysteric Pills, taken along with a pint of claret every day
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Ernst Mach
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Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as study of shock waves. The ratio of speed to that of sound is named the Mach number in his honor. Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach was born in Brno-Chrlice, Moravia and his father, who had graduated from Charles University in Prague, acted as tutor to the noble Brethon family in Zlín, eastern Moravia. His grandfather, Wenzl Lanhaus, an administrator of the estate Chirlitz, was master builder of the streets there. His activities in that later influenced the theoretical work of Ernst Mach. Some sources give Machs birthplace as Turas/Tuřany, the site of the Chirlitz registry-office, peregrin Weiss baptized Ernst Mach into the Roman Catholic Church in Turas/Tuřany. Despite his Catholic background, he became an atheist and his theory. Up to the age of 14, Mach received his education at home from his parents and he then entered a Gymnasium in Kroměříž, where he studied for three years. In 1855 he became a student at the University of Vienna and his early work focused on the Doppler effect in optics and acoustics. During that period, Mach continued his work in psycho-physics and in sensory perception, in 1867, he took the chair of Experimental Physics at the Charles University, Prague, where he stayed for 28 years before returning to Vienna. Machs main contribution to physics involved his description and photographs of spark shock-waves and he described how when a bullet or shell moved faster than the speed of sound, it created a compression of air in front of it. Using schlieren photography, he and his son Ludwig were able to photograph the shadows of the shock waves. During the early 1890s Ludwig was able to invent an interferometer which allowed for much clearer photographs, one of the best-known of Machs ideas is the so-called Mach principle, concerning the physical origin of inertia. This was never written down by Mach, but was given a verbal form, attributed by Philipp Frank to Mach himself, as, When the subway jerks. Mach also became known for his philosophy developed in close interplay with his science. Mach defended a type of phenomenalism recognizing only sensations as real and this position seemed incompatible with the view of atoms and molecules as external, mind-independent things. He famously declared, after an 1897 lecture by Ludwig Boltzmann at the Imperial Academy of Science in Vienna, from about 1908 to 1911 Machs reluctance to acknowledge the reality of atoms was criticized by Max Planck as being incompatible with physics. In 1898 Mach suffered from cardiac arrest and in 1901 retired from the University of Vienna and was appointed to the chamber of the Austrian parliament
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Richard Avenarius
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Richard Ludwig Heinrich Avenarius was a German-Swiss philosopher. He formulated the radical positivist doctrine of criticism or empirio-criticism. Avenarius attended the Nicolaischule in Leipzig and studied athe University of Zurich, Berlin, at the University of Leipzig, he received the Doctor of Philosophy in 1868 with his thesis on Baruch Spinoza and his pantheism, obtained the habilitation in 1876 and taught there as Privatdozent. One year later, he became professor at the University of Zurich and he died in Zurich in 1896. Avenarius believed that philosophy must be concerned with purely descriptive definitions of experience. His opposition to the materialist assertions of Karl Vogt resulted in an attack upon empirio-criticism by Vladimir Lenin in the latters Materialism and Empirio-criticism. Avenarius principal works are the famously difficult Kritik der reinen Erfahrung and Der menschliche Weltbegriff which influenced Ernst Mach, Ber Borochov and, to a lesser extent and he taught Anatoly Lunacharsky and was also influential on Alexander Bogdanov. Avenarius was the son of the German publisher Eduard Avenarius and Cäcilie née Geyer, a daughter of the actor and painter Ludwig Geyer. However, there are speculations in science that her father was the father of Richard Wagner too. Richards brother, Ferdinand Avenarius, led the cultural organization Dürerbund, ueber die beiden ersten Phasen des Spinozischen Pantheismus und das Verhältnis der zweiten zur dritten Phase. Philosophie als Denken der Welt gemäß dem Prinzip des kleinsten Kraftmaßes, prolegomena zu einer Kritik der reinen Erfahrung. Fues, Leipzig 1876, 2nd ed.1903, Kritik der reinen Erfahrung,2 vols. Fues, Leipzig 1888/1890, 2nd ed. 1907/1908, reisland, Leipzig 1891, 2nd ed.1905, 3rd ed.1912. ^ See John Deathridge, Introduction p. XXXIII in Richard Wagner, the Family Letters of Richard Wagner, University of Michigan Press,1991
6.
William James
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William James was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked James as the 14th most cited psychologist of the 20th century and he also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James work has influenced intellectuals such as Émile Durkheim, W. E. B, du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty, and has even influenced Presidents, such as Jimmy Carter. Born into a family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr. James wrote widely on topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion. William James was born at the Astor House in New York City and he was the son of Henry James Sr. a noted and independently wealthy Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. William James received an eclectic trans-Atlantic education, developing fluency in both German and French, education in the James household encouraged cosmopolitanism. The family made two trips to Europe while William James was still a child, setting a pattern that resulted in thirteen more European journeys during his life. In his early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of ailments, including those of the eyes, back, stomach. Two younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson and Robertson, fought in the Civil War, the other three siblings all suffered from periods of invalidism. He took up studies at Harvard Medical School in 1864. His studies were interrupted once again due to illness in April 1867 and he traveled to Germany in search of a cure and remained there until November 1868, at that time he was 26 years old. During this period, he began to publish, reviews of his works appeared in periodicals such as the North American Review. James finally earned his M. D. degree in June 1869, what he called his soul-sickness would only be resolved in 1872, after an extended period of philosophical searching. He married Alice Gibbens in 1878, in 1882 he joined the Theosophical Society. Jamess time in Germany proved intellectually fertile, helping him find that his interests lay not in medicine but in philosophy. Later, in 1902 he would write, I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave. In 1875–1876, James, Henry Pickering Bowditch, Charles Pickering Putnam, G. Stanley Hall, Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud
