Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes

On The Concept of Mind (1949), Ch. 6, "Self-Knowledge." Ryle is arguing against a Cartesian take on mind that he sees as over-intellectualizing. In this case, it is not the case that every conscious act is itself an object of an act of consciousness: Not all consciousness is self-conscious, and introspection itself must involve a layer of mentality (the act of self-consciousness) that is not itself the object of an act of consciousness.

Read along with us, starting on p. 136 (PDF p. 199).

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On "Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet" (2001), an article published with and commenting on papers by psychologists, neurologists, etc. on the state of consciousness studies at the time, featuring his newer metaphor for consciousness, "fame in the brain."

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On "First Person Authority" (1984). What warrants our superior knowledge of our own mental states, as oppose to those of others? Why is this not obvious?

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How shall we break down the universe into basic types of things? Peirce has an idiosyncratic way of thinking about this problem and coming up with his division, revolving around the steps and presuppositions involved in predicating something.

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How shall we break down the universe into basic types of things? Peirce has an idiosyncratic way of thinking about this problem and coming up with his division, revolving around the steps and presuppositions involved in predicating something.

Read along with us.

You can choose to watch this on video.

Subscribe to Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy; follow us there via the free tier to part two and many other episodes like this one ad free, or pay us to get parts 2-5 and everything else we've recorded. (Alternatively, support both PEL and Closereads at patreon.com/partiallyexaminedlife for a nice combo deal.)

On "Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism" (2008). Strawson argues that physicalism should not just be taken as matter in motion. Instead, the physical is a broader category that includes not just chairs and molecules, but also "my experience of red." Yet he's not trying to say that experiences are just brain states; they clearly include qualia (what it's like to experience red). And he's also not just trying to solve the problem by redefining "physical" to include "mental" (though he is doing that). Instead, he's claiming that we have no warrant to claim that the properties of the physical are exhausted by what third-person science can investigate, and that we can't solve the mind-body problem unless we posit that (at least some) physical objects have a mental aspect. Sounds like Spinoza to us! Read along with us.

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On "Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism" (2008). Strawson argues that physicalism should not just be taken as matter in motion. Instead, the physical is a broader category that includes not just chairs and molecules, but also "my experience of red." Yet he's not trying to say that experiences are just brain states; they clearly include qualia (what it's like to experience red). And he's also not just trying to solve the problem by redefining "physical" to include "mental" (though he is doing that).

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On Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, sec. 551-559, which are sections assigned for but not actually covered on The Partially Examined Life ep. 394.

We get more info on how The Enlightenment supposedly mischaracterizes faith, but also how faith sees The Enlightenment and what Hegel considers to be good points coming out of The Enlightenment's critique.

Get more parts to this via patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. You can choose to watch this on video.

On Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, sec. 551-559, which are sections assigned for but not actually covered on The Partially Examined Life ep. 394.

We get more info on how The Enlightenment supposedly mischaracterizes faith, but also how faith sees The Enlightenment and what Hegel considers to be good points coming out of The Enlightenment's critique.

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We read part of The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), specifically the parts about Homer's epic as an allegory for the merely apparent triumph of modernism (capitalism, instrumental reason) over myth (savagery, magical thinking).

Homer is odd for H&A because even stylistically, the epics present a mixture of cultures: They glorify violence, but their form is very ordered, and their very popularity makes them the first mass-culture products of the West. Throughout The Odyssey, Odysseus is in effect saying goodbye to the mythical world as he turns each challenge into a tool in his quest to get home. H&A use the episode with the Sirens as an allegory for how the workers are deafened to the call of anti-social myth (they have their work to do!), while the upper class can hear it but is helpless to actually act on it; like Odysseus tied to the mast, they too are strapped into the capitalist machine.

Read along with us; Ch. 2, "Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment," starts on PDF p56 (p35), but we quickly backtrack to the first mention of Odysseus in Ch. 1 (the same essay we began previously) on PDF p46 (p25).

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