Seminar
Description
Philosophy
380.02—From Neurons to Selves
Michael Taber
St. Mary’s
Is seeing, thinking, or
writing a poem anything other than a dizzyingly complicated series of neuronal
events, or is there something about each that in principle is irreducible to
what happens in one’s three pounds of cranial meat? Human vanity inclines
to fencing off some inner sanctuary from the explanations offered by
neuroscience.
Yet the creep of
neuroscience seems inexorable, and in its consistent aggregation of explanatory
successes, at least as powerful as vanity can be. So
the smart money would seem to be on physical reductionism.
However, two phenomena
that appear particularly recalcitrant to explanation by the likes of sodium and
potassium ion channels are consciousness and free will. Some even go so
far as to cite these phenomena as disproof of physical reductionism.
Those on the other side of the conceptual tracks use what they take as the
obviousness of physical reductionism to ground their audacious hope that
consciousness will fall to prey to the petri dish and the MRI and their
conviction that free will is a belief that we are all better off to be free
of.
Yet if all facts about,
say, bats are physical and therefore in principle publicly observable, then why
does it seem in principle impossible for us ever to come to know what it feels
like to be a bat, how the world appears to be to a bat? Even super-duper MRI’s can’t seem to capture the phenomenal feel of being a
bat interacting with its world.
Furthermore, if all I am
is brain, then is there no room for free action, and so no hope of me being
praiseworthy or blameworthy for my actions? Or might there be a variety
of free action compatible with me being a thoroughly physical system?
We will begin the semester
with mind-brain problem, and conclude with recent work
on free action.
Course learning outcomes
By the end of the course, students will demonstrate
the ability to:
1. analyze how thinkers were
responding to other thinkers about consciousness or free action;
2. apply views of thinkers on
consciousness or free action to issues of continuing relevance;
3. construct effective written
communication of ideas about consciousness or free action;
4. construct effective oral
communication of ideas about consciousness or free action;
5. construct a critique of the
reasoning used for various arguments in discussions of consciousness or free action;
6. ground in primary or
secondary sources their claims about thinkers on consciousness or free action.
Land acknowledgement pledge
We acknowledge that the land on
which we are learning, working, and gathering today is the ancestral home of
the Yacocomico and Piscataway Peoples. We also
acknowledge that St. Mary’s City was partly built and sustained by enslaved
people of African descent. Through this acknowledgement, we recognize these
communities and all those who have been displaced and enslaved through
colonization.
The goal of the land
acknowledgment pledge is not only to respect and honor the contributions of
Indigenous Peoples and enslaved people of African descent, but to support and
learn from all diverse communities in order to build a
more sustainable future.
Send
me mail: mstaber
at smcm dot edu
Go to the home page
for this course.
Go to Michael
Taber's home page.
Go to the SMCM
home page.