Brain sciences

What is Mind?: Perceptions and Context

[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…]

What is Mind?: More on Pragmatism and Thomistic Existentialism

[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…]