[How Brains Make Up Their Minds, Walter J. Freeman, Columbia University Press, 2000] Intentionality in the doctrine of Aquinas does not require consciousness, but it does require acting to create meaning instead of just thinking. This view is shared by the philosophers Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, J.J. Gibson, and the pragmatists. We sniff, move our … [Read more…]
I continue to write about the insights on human nature and the philosophical system explicated in the book: How Brains Make Up Their Minds, Walter J. Freeman, Columbia University Press, 2000. The examples of the athlete and dancer demonstrate what I consider to be the three main properties of intentionality. The first is unity. Our … [Read more…]
[How Brains Make Up Their Minds, Walter J. Freeman, Columbia University Press, 2000] Professor Freeman and his students made an important discovery in the late 1970s: the brain response to what is seemingly the same stimulus is not always the same. They trained rabbits respond to various odors, using sawdust twice in the experiments, once … [Read more…]
[How Brains Make Up Their Minds, Walter J. Freeman, Columbia University Press, 2000] Intentionality in the doctrine of Aquinas does not require consciousness, but it does require acting to create meaning instead of just thinking. This view is shared by the philosophers Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, J.J. Gibson, and the pragmatists. We sniff, move our … [Read more…]
[How Brains Make Up Their Minds, Walter J. Freeman, Columbia University Press, 2000] In “Meaning and Representation”, Chapter 2 of the referenced book, Professor Freeman has a perceptive and intelligent discussion of the materialist, cognitive, and pragmatic views of the mind and most especially the mind of the self-aware human being. (It’s a matter of … [Read more…]
I’m thinking my way towards the sort of intentional view of moral nature pioneered by St. Thomas Aquinas. There is a clear explanation of intentionality, a biological concept to match our biological natures, in How Brains Make Up Their Minds by the neuroscientist Walter J. Freeman. Sticking strictly to the empirical aspects of this concept, … [Read more…]