Philosophy of Mind: Brains, Consciousness, and Thinking Machines

Course Overview

Use philosophical tools to examine the provocative and widely debated question of what the human mind is and how it is created by the brain.

Course No. 4278

The quest to understand the mind has motivated some of history’s most profound thinkers. But only in our own time are we beginning to see the true complexity of this quest, as today’s philosophers draw on the latest evidence from neuroscience, psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and other fields to probe deeply into the inner workings of the mind.

These 24 stimulating lectures from an award-winning teacher and honored scholar present a clear, systematic, and compelling introduction to the philosophy of mind, exploring all of the major theories, including:

• Dualism, which holds that body and mind are separate substances.
• Behaviorism and Functionalism, which stress behavior and interactions with the world as clues to the mind’s inner workings.
• Idealism, the view that the physical world is an illusion and that only the mental realm exists.
• The “antitheories” of mind, which posit that subjective mental experiences are fundamentally inexplicable and will always remain a mystery.

Examining the most intriguing questions and influential theories in what can often be a complex and controversial intellectual terrain, Professor Grim sorts out the different approaches to give you the pros and cons of each.

Video Lectures

01: The Dream, the Brain, and the Machine (33 min)

Professor Grim previews the range of ideas in the course with three examples: a dream of the philosopher René Descartes in 1619, the saga of Einstein’s brain after his death, and a steam-driven computer designed in the mid-1800s.

02: The Mind-Body Problem (30 min)

How does the mental relate to the physical? One response is Dualism, developed by Descartes, which sees the two as radically distinct.

03: Brains and Minds, Parts and Wholes (31 min)

The strange case of Phineas Gage, who suffered a horrible brain injury in 1848, sheds light on the brain-mind connection.

04: The Inner Theater (30 min)

Do we have an inner realm where representations of the world are displayed completely? A range of experiments seem to show that something much more complicated is going on.

05: Living in the Material World (31 min)

You examine alternatives to Dualism—from the idea that the universe is purely mental (idealism) to the view that it is purely physical (materialism).

06: A Functional Approach to the Mind (31 min)

Behaviorism and Functionalism take a radically different approach to the body and mind.

07: What Is It about Robots? (30 min)

If Functionalism is right, a machine could have real perception, emotion, pleasure, and pain. Wouldn’t it then also have ethical rights?

08: Body Image (31 min)

Having conjectured how a body produces a mind, we approach the problem from the other side: how a mind produces a body.

09: Self-Identity and Other Minds (31 min)

This lecture explores our concept of ourselves and other minds—not just human but animal—together with puzzling questions about self posed by “teletransporter” thought experiments and split-brain cases.

10: Perception—What Do You Really See? (30 min)

What do we really see? What do we really hear? Empiricism argues that what we perceive are not things in the world but rather subjective sense data.

11: Perception—Intentionality and Evolution (31 min)

The intentionalist view holds that perception is always “about” something. The evolutionary view sees perception as an evolved grab bag of tricks.

12: A Mind in the World (31 min)

In order to understand the mind, we have to understand the environment in which it functions—the mind in the world.

13: A History of Smart Machines (32 min)

You trace the fascinating stories of computing machines—from the Antikythera device of 100 BCE, to legends of mechanical calculating heads in the Middle Ages, to Charles Babbage’s designs for steam-driven computers in the 1840s.

14: Intelligence and IQ (31 min)

This lecture looks at attempts to measure intelligence.

15: Artificial Intelligence (30 min)

In 1950, Alan Turing proposed a test for determining whether a machine displays human intelligence, predicting that such a thinking machine would exist by 2000.

16: Brains and Computers (30 min)

Computers use binary digits and logic gates. By contrast, brains are built of neurons, which are far more complex. While we know how computers work, we are ignorant of brain function on many levels.

17: Attacks on Artificial Intelligence (31 min)

The very concept of artificial intelligence has serious critics, including Hubert Dreyfus and John Searle. The latter has a powerful argument called the “Chinese room,” which this lecture considers from both sides of the debate.

18: Do We Have Free Will? (31 min)

Can our actions be free? The compatibilist view holds that free will, when properly understood, is a natural part of a causal universe.

19: Seeing and Believing (31 min)

This lecture explores how our conscious experience is shaped by background beliefs and expectations. This issue raises an important question for our justice system: Is eyewitness testimony reliable?

20: Mysteries of Color (31 min)

Is color real or is it something that exists only in the mind? You explore this question with thought experiments and insights.

21: The Hard Problem of Consciousness (31 min)

If there is a defining problem in philosophy of mind today, it is the problem of accounting for our subjective experience. David Chalmers calls this the “hard problem of consciousness.”

22: The Conscious Brain—2½ Physical Theories (31 min)

How are we to understand conscious experience? This lecture considers two attempts to explain consciousness in terms of physical processes in the brain.

23: The HOT Theory and Antitheories (32 min)

The philosopher David Rosenthal identifies consciousness with “higher-order thoughts”—HOT. You also survey antitheories.

24: What We Know and What We Don’t Know (34 min)

Professor Grim reviews the high points of the course, focusing on questions raised by Lecture 1.