Edge 2011: What scientific concept would improve everybody´s cognitive toolkit?

HOWARD GARDNER
Psychologist, Harvard University; Author, Truth, Beauty, And Goodness Reframed: Educating For The Virtues In The 21St Century

"How Would You Disprove Your Viewpoint?!"

BRUCE HOOD
Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre in the Experimental Psychology Department at the University of Bristol; Author, Supersense

Haecceity

W. DANIEL HILLIS
Physicist, Computer Scientist; Chairman, Applied Minds, Inc.; Author, The Pattern on the Stone

Possibility Spaces: Thinking Beyond Cause and Effect

NICHOLAS HUMPHREY
Psychologist, London School of Economics; Author, Soul Dust

The "Multiverse"

GEORGE LAKOFF
Cognitive Scientist and Linguist; Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics, UC Berkeley; Author, The Political Mind

Conceptual Metaphor

STEVEN PINKER
Johnstone Family Professor, Department of Psychology; Harvard University; Author, The Stuff of Thought

Positive-Sum Games

ROGER SCHANK
Psychologist & Computer Scientist; Engines for Education Inc.; Author, Making Minds Less Well Educated Than Our Own

Experimentation

SEAN CARROLL
Theoretical Physicist, Caltech; Author, From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time

The Pointless Universe

REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN
Philosopher; Novelist; Author, Betraying Spinoza; 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction

Inference To The Best Explanation

NICHOLAS CARR
Author, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Cognitive Load

RICHARD NISBETT
Social Psychologist, Co-Director, Culture and Cognition Program, University of Michigan; Author, Intelligence and How to Get It

"Graceful" SHA's

ROB KURZBAN
Psychologist, UPenn; Director, Penn Laboratory for Experimental Evolutionary Psychology (PLEEP); Author, Why Everyone (Else) is a Hypocrite

Externalities

DAVID G. MYERS
Social psychologist, Hope College; Author, A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists

Self-Serving Bias

DOUGLAS T. KENRICK
Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University; Author, Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life; Editor, Evolution and Social Psychology

Subselves and the Modular Mind

MICHAEL SHERMER
Publisher of Skeptic Magazine; Adjunct Professor, Claremont Graduate University; Author, The Believing Brain

Think Bottom Up, Not Top Down

IRENE PEPPERBERG
Psychologist, Research Associate, Harvard University; Author, Alex and Me

Fixed-Action Patterns: Using The Study Of Animal Instinct As A Metaphor For Human Behavior

MARCEL KINSBOURNE
Neurologist & Cognitive Neuroscientist, The New School; Coauthor, Children's Learning and Attention Problems

The Expanding In-Group

JONATHAN HAIDT
Psychologist, University of Virginia; Author, The Happiness Hypothesis

Contingent Superorganism

NEIL GERSHENFELD
Director, MIT Center for Bits and Atoms; Author, FAB

Truth is a Model

CLAY SHIRKY
Social & Technology Network Topology Researcher; Adjunct Professor, NYU Graduate School of Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP); Author, Cognitive Surplus

Pareto Principle

ALISON GOPNIK
Psychologist, UC, Berkeley; Author, The Philosophical Baby

The Rational Unconscious

WILLIAM CALVIN
Neuroscientist, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington in Seattle. Author, Global Fever: How to Treat Climate Change

Find That Frame

LAWRENCE KRAUSS
Physicist, Foundation Professor & Director, Origins Project, Arizona State University; Author, A Universe from Nothing; Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science

Uncertainty

THOMAS METZINGER
Philosopher, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies; Author, The Ego Tunnel

Phenomenally Transparent Self-Model

RICHARD FOREMAN
Playwright & Director; Founder, The Ontological-Hysteric Theater

Negative Capability Is A Profound Therapy

DONALD HOFFMAN
Cognitive Scientist, UC, Irvine; Author, Visual Intelligence

Sensory Desktop

HELEN FISHER
Research Professor, Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University; Author, Why We Love
Temperament Dimensions

 JOEL GOLD, M.D.
Psychiatrist; Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, NYU School of Medicine

ARISE

DON TAPSCOTT
Founder, Moxie Insight;  Adjunct Professor, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto;  Author, Grown Up Digital; Macrowikinomics
Designing Your Mind

 

GERD GIGERENZER
Psychologist; Director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin; Author, Gut Feelings

Risk Literacy

GERALD SMALLBERG, MD
Practicing Neurologist, New York City; Playwright, Off-Off Broadway Productions, Charter Members; The Gold Ring

Bias Is The Nose For The Story

MARK HENDERSON
Science Editor, The Times; Author, 50 Genetics Ideas You Really Need to Know

Science's Methods Aren't Just For Science

ADAM ALTER
Psychologist; Assistant Professor, Stern School of Business, NYU

The "Cognitive Iceberg:" Humans Are Blind To Many Of The Processes That Shape Their Mental Lives

NICK BOSTROM
Professor; Director, Future of Humanity Institute, Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford

Game of Life — And Looking For Generators

ROBERT SAPOLSKY
Neuroscientist, Stanford University; Author, Monkeyluv

The Lure Of A Good Story

ERIC TOPOL
Professor of Translational Genomics, The Scripps Research Institute; Cardiologist, Scripps Clinic

Hunting for Root Cause: The Human "Black Box"

GEOFFREY MILLER
Evolutionary Psychologist, University of New Mexico; Author, The Mating Mind; Spent

Personality traits are continuous with mental illnesses

DAN SPERBER
Professor in philosophy and cognitive science at the Central European University, Budapest

Cultural Attractors

DAVE WINER
Visiting Scholar in Journalism, NYU; Pioneer Software Developer (Blogging, Podcasting, RSS, Outliners, Web Content Management)

While We Are Social Creatures, It's Often Best Not To Admit It

JONAH LEHRER
Contributing Editor, Wired; author, How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist

Control Your Spotlight

MARCO IACOBONI
Neuroscientist, UCLA Brain Mapping Center; Author, Mirroring People

Entanglement

TANIA LOMBROZO
Cognitive Psychologist, UC, Berkeley

Defeasibility

ERNST PÖPPEL
Neuroscientist, Chairman, Human Science Center and Department of Medical Psychology, Munich University; Author, Mindworks

A cognitive toolkit full of garbage

MARK PAGEL
Evolutionary Biologist, University of Reading; External Professor, The Santa Fe Institute; Author, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Evolution

Knowledge

PAUL BLOOM
Psychologist, Yale University; Author, How Pleasure Works

Reason

EDUARDO SALCEDO-ALBARÁN
Philosopher; Founder, Manager, Metodo

Homo Sensus-Sapiens: The animal that feels and rationalizes

DAVID M. BUSS
Professor of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin; Coauthor: Why Women Have Sex; author, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating and Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

Sexual Selection

SUE BLACKMORE
Psychologist; Author, Consciousness: An Introduction

Correlation is not a cause 

P.Z. MYERS
Biologist, University of Minnesota; blogger, Pharyngula

The Mediocrity Principle

SAM HARRIS
Neuroscientist; Chairman, Project Reason; Author, The Moral Landscape

We are Lost in Thought

CARL ZIMMER
Journalist, author of The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution

Life As A Side Effect

JOSHUA GREENE
Cognitive Neuroscientist and Philosopher, Harvard University  

Supervenience! 

JOAN CHIAO
Assistant Professor, Brain, Behavior, and Cognition; Social Psychology; Northwestern University

Diversity is Universal

FIERY CUSHMAN
Post-doctoral fellow, Mind/Brain/Behavior Interfaculty Initiative, Harvard University

Confabulation

XENI JARDIN
Tech Culture Journalist; Partner, Contributor, Co-editor, Boing Boing; Executive Producer, host, Boing Boing Video

AMBIENT MEMORY AND THE MYTH OF NEUTRAL OBSERVATION

DIANE F. HALPERN
Psychologis; Director of the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children at Claremont McKenna College

A Statistically Significant Difference in Understanding the Scientific Process 

Stuart Firestein
Neuroscientist, Columbia Universtiy

The Name Game

ANDREW REVKIN
Journalist; Environmentalist; Writer, New York Times "Dot Earth" blog; Author, The North Pole was Here

Anthropophilia

GARY MARCUS
Cognitive Scientist, NYU; Author, Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind

Cognitive Humility

MAHZARIN R. BANAJI
Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Department of Psychology, Harvard University

A Solution for Collapsed Thinking: Signal Detection Theory 

RICHARD THALER
The Father of Behavioral Economics; Director, Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business; Coauthor, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Aether

V.S. RAMACHANDRAN
Neuroscientist; Director, Center for Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego; Author, The Tell-Tale Brain: Unlocking the Mystery of Human Nature

Chunks With "Handles"

Metafísicas Comparadas

 



stephen hicks

Realismo Científico: lecturas para un seminario

PDF (esp)

REALISMO CIENTÍFICO
 

REALISMO DE ENTIDADES
 

IAN HACKING: REALISMO CIENTÍFICO SIN VERDAD
 

LA TENSIÓN ENTRE EL FALSIFICACIONISMO Y EL REALISMO:UN EXAMEN CRÍTICO DEL PROBLEMA EN LA FILOSOFÍA DE KARL POPPER
 

INSTRUMENTALISMO
 

LA GUERRA DE LAS CIENCIAS :HOLISMO SEMÁNTICO VERSUS REALISMO
 

LA INCOMPATIBILIDAD DEL NATURALISMOY EL REALISMO CIENTÍFICO
 

ÉXITO EMPÍRICO O ÉXITO EXPLICATIVO:¿QUÉ NECESITA EXPLICAR EL REALISMO CIENTÍFICO ACTUAL?
 

LA CIENCIA NO TIENE NADA QUE VER CON EL ASUNTO DE LA VERDAD

Vargas-Mendoza, J. E. (2008) Realismo Científico: lecturas
para un seminario. México: Asociación Oaxaqueña de Psicología
A.C.

Historia del pensamiento transhumanista (Bostrom. 2005)

PDF (eng)

A HISTORY OF TRANSHUMANIST THOUGHT (2005)
Nick Bostrom
Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University

Libro "Ser, saber, hacer" de Mario Bunge

PDF   ESP/654kb

Ser, saber, hacer (2002) de Mario Bunge

Se dice, y con razón, que la filosofía está en crisis. No queda escuela filosófica en pie, escasean las nuevas ideas filosóficas profundas y aún más los sistemas de ideas filosóficas. Las filosofías que se enseñan en las universidades están escolastizadas y han dejado de inspirar a las ciencias. Mientras tanto, las ciencias y las técnicas siguen avanzando vertiginosamente.
Todo está cambiando, menos la filosofía. los tomistas siguen comentando a Tomás y al Estagirita. Los marxistas siguen discutiendo los textos de sus clásicos. De los positivistas lógicos no queda sino el recuerdo. Doctrinas que fueron innovadoras son hoy conservadoras. [...]
La crisis de la filosofía es tan grave que ha llegado a hablarse de su muerte. Hay incluso toda una industria de la muerte de la filosofía. Esta empresa me parece tonta y deshonesta, pues no se puede prescindir de la filosofía: sólo se puede prescindir de la mala filosofía. Y nadie tiene derecho a cobrar un salario por proclamar la muerte de su propia disciplina. De modo que si la filosofía está en ruinas, hay que poner cerebros a la obra y reconstruirla.

Indice

Prólogo: Desafíos filosóficos que la ciencia y la técnica del siglo XX
plantean al filósofo
Introducción: Crisis y reconstrucción de la filosofía

Ser, saber, hacer
Ontología: ser y devenir
Gnoseología y semántica: saber y significar
Axiología y ética: valer y hacer

La filosofía práctica como técnica
Axiología
Ética
Praxiología
Metodología
Filosofía social
Conclusión
Apéndice: Análisis del concepto de magnitud física

Veinticinco siglos de física cuántica: del subjetivismo al realismo
Cuantificación clásica
Cuantificación moderna
Materia extraña
Ortodoxia y heterodoxia
Causalidad y atomismo
Dos paradojas
Resurrección y muerte de las variables ocultas
Fenomenismo y realismo
Conclusión: Interacción entre ciencia y filosofía

Psicología, neurociencia y filosofía
Un poco de historia
Ejemplos contemporáneos

Algunos conceptos filosóficos que intervienen en la psicología
Algunos principios filosóficos inherentes a la investigación psicológica
Algunos problemas filosófico-psicológicos
Controversias filosóficas en psicología
Relevancia de la psicología para la filosofía
Conclusión

Ciencias sociales: problemas y enfoques
Ciencias y técnicas sociales
Ontología social: tres enfoques de lo social

Epistemología social: tres concepciones de los estudios sociales
Ejemplos: tres problemas sociales

Conclusiones
Fuentes
Bibliografía

Nietzsche: a los que desprecian el cuerpo

"On the Despisers of the Body":

one not speak like children? But the awakened and knowing say: body am I entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something about the body. The body is a great reason, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a shepherd. An instrument of your body is also your little reason, my brother, which you call "spirit"--a little instrument and toy of your great reason. . . . Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty ruler, an unknown sage--whose name is self. In your body he dwells; he is your body. There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. [Kauffman translation, 1954, p.146]

  A los que desprecian el cuerpo quiero dirigirles mi palabra. No deben aprender ni enseñar otras doctrinas, sino tan sólo decir adiós a su propio cuerpo, y enmudecer. 

 

 «Cuerpo soy yo y alma» –así hablaba el niño. ¿Y por qué no hablar como los niños?... Pero el despierto, el sabio, dice: cuerpo soy yo íntegramente, y ninguna otra cosa; y alma es sólo una palabra para designar algo en el cuerpo. 

 

El cuerpo es una gran razón, una pluralidad dotada de un único sentido, una guerra y una paz, un rebaño y un pastor. Instrumento de tu cuerpo es también tu pequeña razón, a la que llamas «espíritu», un pequeño instrumento y un pequeño juguete de tu gran razón. [Por eso] dices «yo» y estás orgulloso de esa palabra. Pero esa cosa más grande aún, en la que tú no quieres creer, tu cuerpo y su gran razón, ésa [parte] no dice yo, pero hace yo. 

 

Lo que el sentido siente, lo que el espíritu conoce, eso nunca tiene dentro de sí su término. Pero sentido y espíritu querrían persuadirte de que ellos son el término de todas las cosas, [pues] tan vanidosos son… [Pero] instrumentos y juguetes son el sentido y el espíritu: tras ellos se encuentra todavía el si-mismo…

 

El sí-mismo busca también con los ojos de los sentidos, escucha también con los oídos del espíritu. El sí-mismo escucha siempre y busca siempre: compara, subyuga, conquista, destruye. Él domina y es también el dominador del yo.

 

Detrás de tus pensamientos y sentimientos, hermano mío, se encuentra un soberano poderoso, un sabio desconocido –llamase sí-mismo. En tu cuerpo habita, es tu cuerpo. [Por eso] Hay más razón en tu cuerpo que en tu mejor sabiduría. ¿Y quién sabe para qué necesita tu cuerpo precisamente tu mejor sabiduría? Tu sí-mismo se ríe de tu yo y de sus orgullosos saltos. «¿Qué son para mí esos saltos y esos vuelos del pensamiento? –se dice. Un rodeo hacia mi meta. Yo soy las andaderas del yo y el apuntador de sus conceptos». El sí-mismo dice al yo: «¡Siente dolor aquí!» Y el yo sufre y reflexiona sobre cómo dejar de sufrir –y justo para ello debe pensar. El sí-mismo dice al yo: «¡Siente placer aquí!» Y el yo se alegra y reflexiona sobre cómo seguir gozando a menudo –y justo para ello debe pensar.

 

A los despreciadores del cuerpo quiero decirles una palabra. Su despreciar constituye su apreciar. ¿Qué es lo que creó el apreciar y el despreciar, y el valor y la voluntad? El sí-mismo creador se creó para sí el apreciar y el despreciar, se creó para sí el placer y el dolor. El cuerpo creador se creó para sí el espíritu como una mano de su voluntad...

 

Incluso en la tontería y el desprecio de ustedes, despreciadores del cuerpo, son esclavos de su sí-mismo. –Yo les digo… también su sí-mismo quiere morir y se aparta de la vida. Ya no es capaz de hacer lo que más quiere: crear por encima de sí. Eso es lo que más quiere, ese es todo su ardiente deseo. Para hacer esto, sin embargo, es ya demasiado tarde para él: por eso es que sí-mismo de ustedes quiere hundirse en su ocaso, despreciadores del cuerpo. ¡Hundirse en su ocaso quiere su sí-mismo, y por ello se convierten ustedes en despreciadores del cuerpo! Pues ya no son capaces de crear por encima de ustedes [mismos]. Y por eso se enojan ahora contra la vida y contra la tierra. Una inconsciente envidia hay en la oblicua mirada de su desprecio.

 

¡Yo no voy por el camino de ustedes, despreciadores del cuerpo, [porque] ustedes no son para mí [un] puente hacía el superhombre!... 

    DE LOS DESPRECIADORES DEL CUERPO.

Así habló Zarathustra.(Libro I, año 1882)

Excomunión de Spinoza

Excomulgamos, maldecimos y separamos a Baruch de Espinoza
con el consentimiento de Dios bendito
y con el de toda esta comunidad,
delante de estos libros de la Ley,
que contienen trescientos trece preceptos;

la excomunión que Josué lanzó sobre Jericó,
la maldición que Elías profirió contra los niños
y todas las maldiciones escritas en el libro de la ley;
maldito sea de día y maldito sea de noche,
maldito al acostarse y maldito al levantarse,
maldito sea al entrar y al salir;

no quiera el Altísimo perdonarle,
hasta que su furor y su celo abracen a este hombre;
lance sobre él todas las maldiciones escritas en el libro de esta Ley,
borre su nombre de bajo los cielos
y sepárelo, para su desgracia de todas las tribus de Israel,
con todas las maldiciones del firmamento,
escritas en el Libro de la Ley...,

advirtiendo que nadie puede hablarle oralmente ni por escrito,
ni hacerle ningún favor ni estar con él bajo el mismo techo
ni a menos de cuatro codos de él,
ni leer papel hecho o escrito por él.

Acta de excomunión de Spinoza.
Comunidad Hebrea de Amsterdam
Amsterdam, 27 de julio de 1656

Libro "Dialogues concerning natural religion" de David Hume (1776)

 Online (eng)

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is a philosophical work written by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Through dialogue, three fictional characters named Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes debate the nature of God's existence. While all three agree that a god exists, they differ sharply in opinion on God's nature or attributes and how, or if, humankind can come to knowledge of a deity.

In the Dialogues, Hume's characters debate a number of arguments for the existence of God, and arguments whose proponents believe through which we may come to know the nature of God. Such topics debated include the argument from design -- for which Hume uses a house -- and whether there is more suffering or good in the world (argument from evil).

Hume started writing the Dialogues in 1750 but did not complete them until 1776, shortly before his death. They are based partly on Cicero's De Natura Deorum. The Dialogues were published posthumously in 1779, originally with neither the author's nor the publisher's name.

Ataraxia

Ataraxia (Ἀταραξία "tranquillity") is a Greek term used by Pyrrho and Epicurus for a lucid state, characterized by freedom from worry or any other preoccupation.

For the Epicureans, ataraxia was synonymous with the only true happiness possible for a person. It signifies the state of robust tranquility that derives from eschewing faith in an afterlife, not fearing the gods because they are distant and unconcerned with us, avoiding politics and vexatious people, surrounding oneself with trustworthy and affectionate friends and, most importantly, being an affectionate, virtuous person, worthy of trust.

For the Pyrrhonians, owing to one's inability to say which sense impressions are true and which ones are false, it is the quietude that arises from suspending judgment on dogmatic beliefs or anything non-evident and continuing to inquire. The experience was said to have fallen on the painter Apelles who was trying to paint the foamy saliva of a horse. He was so unsuccessful that, in a rage, he gave up and threw the sponge he was cleaning his brushes with at the medium, thus producing the effect of the horse's foam.


The Stoics, too, sought mental tranquility, and saw ataraxia as something to be desired and often made use of the term, but for them the analogous state, attained by the Stoic sage, was apatheia or absence of passion.

Enactivismo

Enactivism is a theoretical approach to understanding the mind proposed by Gregory Bateson, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela and Eleanor Rosch. It emphasizes the way that organisms and the human mind organize themselves by interacting with their environment. It is closely related to situated cognition and embodied cognition, and is presented as an alternative to cognitivism, computationalism and Cartesian dualism.

In The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, Francisco Varela claims to have "proposed using the term enactive to designate this view of knowledge, to evoke the view that what is known is brought forth, in contraposition to the more classical views of either cognitivism or connectionism." Within the book, the analogies of the Razor's Edge and the Scylla and Charybdis are used to describe the "epistemologic Odyssey" between the notions of solipsism and representationalism. Enactivism, therefore is the middle ground between the two extremes.

Maturana and Varela use this term to "confront the problem of understanding how our existence-the praxis of our living- is coupled to a surrounding world which appears filled with regularities that are at every instant the result of our biological and social histories.... to find a via media: to understand the regularity of the world we are experiencing at every moment, but without any point of reference independent of ourselves that would give certainty to our descriptions and cognitive assertions. Indeed the whole mechanism of generating ourselves, as describers and observers tells us that our world, as the world which we bring forth in our coexistence with others, will always have precisely that mixture of regularity and mutability, that combination of solidity and shifting sand, so typical of human experience when we look at it up close."

Scholars with sympathetic ideas

Andy Clark Rodney Brooks Jerome Bruner Hubert Dreyfus Walter Freeman Riccardo Manzotti Teed Rockwell

Fernando Flores J.J. Gibson Edwin Hutchins Mark Johnson Joe L. Kincheloe George Lakoff Humberto Maturana

Jean Piaget Richard Rorty Ron Sun Francisco Varela Terry Winograd Alva Noë

Enactivismo según David Reid

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Richard Rorty sobre Foucault

Richard Rorty has argued that Foucault's so-called 'archaeology of knowledge' is fundamentally negative, and thus fails to adequately establish any 'new' theory of knowledge per se. Rather, Foucault simply provides a few valuable maxims regarding the reading of history:


"As far as I can see, all he has to offer are brilliant redescriptions of the past, supplemented by helpful hints on how to avoid being trapped by old historiographical assumptions. These hints consist largely of saying: "do not look for progress or meaning in history; do not see the history of a given activity, of any segment of culture, as the development of rationality or of freedom; do not use any philosophical vocabulary to characterize the essence of such activity or the goal it serves; do not assume that the way this activity is presently conducted gives any clue to the goals it served in the past."

– Rorty, R. "Foucault and Epistemology", 1986,

dc

Libro "Romper el hechizo" de Daniel Dennett

Bajar libro (ESP)

Romper el hechizo intenta arrojar un poco de luz a preguntas peliagudas. ¿Por qué y cómo se originó la religión desde el punto de vista de la psicología evolutiva? ¿Por qué significa tanto para la gente? ¿Por qué somos capaces de matar o morir por ella? ¿Aporta más beneficios que obstáculos? ¿Debe de ser erradicada, como se hace con las sectas destructivas o las ideologías neonazis, o debe de ser respetada simplemente porque muchos individuos la respaldan?

“Las grandes ideas de la religión -sostiene Daniel Dennett en esta obra- han mantenido a los seres humanos cautivados durante miles de años. Si queremos entender la naturaleza de la religión hoy como un fenómeno natural, debemos atender no sólo a lo que ella es actualmente, sino a lo que solía ser.” Al analizar la religión como un fenómeno natural, resultado de los imperativos de la evolución, el autor provee una nueva perspectiva desde la cual considerar qué es hoy la religión y por qué significa tanto para tantas personas. “Entonces -señala Dennett- lograremos ver mejor hacia dónde podría estar dirigiéndose la religión en un futuro cercano, nuestro futuro en este planeta. No puedo pensar en investigar ningún tema más importante que éste.”

Daniel C. Dennett (Boston, 1942) es un filósofo de Harvard bien distinto de la mayoría de filósofos, aquéllos que esconden sus opiniones arbitrarias (respaldadas, además, por momias del pensamiento) tras un pomposo lenguaje. Dennett, por el contrario, se explica con claridad y cercanía, y además se ha preocupado de estudiar a fondo múltiples materias científicas para dar cuerpo a sus tesis, como las ciencias cognitivas, la inteligencia artificial o la memética, incluso ofreciendo a la comunidad científica significativos aportes en cuanto a la significación actual del darwinismo. En definitiva, la filosofía que practica Dennett es una filosofía ligada a la investigación empírica, la que en el próximo siglo revolucionará el conocimiento incluso en ámbitos que hace poco parecían exclusivos de las disciplinas humanistas.

Por Sergio Parra

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Curso de Filosofía de Shelly Kagan (Yale)

Shelly Kagan is the Clark Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and the former Henry R. Luce Professor of Social Thought and Ethics. Originally a native of Skokie, Illinois, he received his B.A. from Wesleyan University and his Ph.D. from Princeton University under the supervision of Thomas Nagel in 1982. He taught at the University of Pittsburgh and at the University of Illinois at Chicago before arriving at Yale.



Otras clases.

The nature of death
The badness of death
Fear of death
Arguments for the existence of the soul 
Plato´s Phaedro
Other bad aspects of death
Free will and near death experiences
Personal identity
11 Personal identity II
Objections to personality theory
Rationality of suicide
 
dc

Características de la conciencia.

4. The descriptive question: What are the features of consciousness?

The What question asks us to describe and model the principal features of consciousness, but just which features are relevant will vary with the sort of consciousness we aim to capture. The main properties of access consciousness may be quite unlike those of qualitative or phenomenal consciousness, and those of reflexive consciousness or narrative consciousness may differ from both. However, by building up detailed theories of each type, we may hope to find important links between them and perhaps even to discover that they coincide in at least some key respects.

• First person and third person data
• Qualitative character
• Phenomenal structure
• Subjectivity
• Self perspectival organization
• Unity
• Intentionality and transparency
• Dynamic flow

4.1 First-person and third-person data

The general descriptive project will require a variety of investigational methods (Flanagan 1992). Though one might naively regard the facts of consciousness as too self-evident to require any systematic methods of gathering data, the epistemic task is in reality far from trivial (Husserl 1913).
First-person introspective access provides a rich and essential source of insight into our conscious mental life, but it is neither sufficient in itself nor even especially helpful unless used in a trained and disciplined way. Gathering the needed evidence about the structure of experience requires us both to become phenomenologically sophisticated self-observers and to complement our introspective results with many types of third-person data available to external observer (Searle 1992, Varela 1995, Siewert 1998)

Francisco Varela

As phenomenologists have known for more than a century, discovering the structure of conscious experience demands a rigorous inner-directed stance that is quite unlike our everyday form or self-awareness (Husserl 1929, Merleau-Ponty 1945). Skilled observation of the needed sort requires training, effort and the ability to adopt alternative perspectives on one's experience.
The need for third-person empirical data gathered by external observers is perhaps most obvious with regard to the more clearly functional types of consciousness such as access consciousness, but it is required even with regard to phenomenal and qualitative consciousness. For example, deficit studies that correlate various neural and functional sites of damage with abnormalities of conscious experience can make us aware of aspects of phenomenal structure that escape our normal introspective awareness. As such case studies show, things can come apart in experience that seem inseparably unified or singular from our normal first-person point of view (Sacks 1985, Shallice 1988, Farah 1995).


Or to pick another example, third-person data can make us aware of how our experiences of acting and our experiences of event-timing affect each other in ways that we could never discern through mere introspection (Libet 1985, Wegner 2002). Nor are the facts gathered by these third person methods merely about the causes or bases of consciousness; they often concern the very structure of phenomenal consciousness itself. First-person, third-person and perhaps even second-person (Varela 1995) interactive methods will all be needed to collect the requisite evidence.
Using all these sources of data, we will hopefully be able to construct detailed descriptive models of the various sorts of consciousness. Though the specific features of most importance may vary among the different types, our overall descriptive project will need to address at least the following seven general aspects of consciousness (sections 4.2 - 4.7).

4.2 Qualitative character

Qualitative character is often equated with so called “raw feels” and illustrated by the redness one experiences when one looks at ripe tomatoes or the specific sweet sapor one encounters when one tastes an equally ripe pineapple (Locke 1688). The relevant sort of qualitative character is not restricted to sensory states, but is typically taken to be present as an aspect of experiential states in general, such as experienced thoughts or desires (Siewert 1998).
The existence of such feels may seem to some to mark the threshold for states or creatures that are really conscious. If an organism senses and responds in apt ways to its world but lacks such qualia, then it might count as conscious at best in a loose and less than literal sense. Or so at least it would seem to those who take qualitative consciousness in the “what it is like” sense to be philosophically and scientifically central (Nagel 1974, Chalmers 1996).

Qualia problems in many forms — Can there be inverted qualia? (Block 1980a 1980b, Shoemaker 1981, 1982) Are qualia epiphenomenal? (Jackson 1982, Chalmers 1996) How could neural states give rise to qualia? (Levine 1983, McGinn 1991) — have loomed large in the recent past. But the What question raises a more basic problem of qualia: namely that of giving a clear and articulated description of our qualia space and the status of specific qualia within it.
Absent such a model, factual or descriptive errors are all too likely. For example, claims about the unintelligibility of the link between experienced red and any possible neural substrate of such an experience sometimes treat the relevant color quale as a simple and sui generis property (Levine 1983), but phenomenal redness in fact exists within a complex color space with multiple systematic dimensions and similarity relations (Hardin 1992). Understanding the specific color quale relative to that larger relational structure not only gives us a better descriptive grasp of its qualitative nature, it may also provide some “hooks” to which one might attach intelligible psycho-physical links.
Color may be the exception in terms of our having a specific and well developed formal understanding of the relevant qualitative space, but it is not likely an exception with regard to the importance of such spaces to our understanding of qualitative properties in general (Clark 1993, P.M. Churchland 1995). (See the entry on qualia.)

 

4.3 Phenomenal structure

Phenomenal structure should not be conflated with qualitative structure, despite the sometimes interchangeable use of “qualia” and “phenomenal properties” in the literature. “Phenomenal organization” covers all the various kinds of order and structure found within the domain of experience, i.e., within the domain of the world as it appears to us. There are obviously important links between the phenomenal and the qualitative. Indeed qualia might be best understood as properties of phenomenal or experienced objects, but there is in fact far more to the phenomenal than raw feels. As Kant (1787), Husserl (1913), and generations of phenomenologists have shown, the phenomenal structure of experience is richly intentional and involves not only sensory ideas and qualities but complex representations of time, space, cause, body, self, world and the organized structure of lived reality in all its conceptual and nonconceptual forms.
Since many non-conscious states also have intentional and representational aspects, it may be best to consider phenomenal structure as involving a special kind of intentional and representational organization and content, the kind distinctively associated with consciousness (Siewert 1998). (See the entry on representational theories of consciousness).
Answering the What question requires a careful account of the coherent and densely organized representational framework within which particular experiences are embedded. Since most of that structure is only implicit in the organization of experience, it can not just be read off by introspection. Articulating the structure of the phenomenal domain in a clear and intelligible way is a long and difficult process of inference and model building (Husserl 1929). Introspection can aid it, but a lot of theory construction and ingenuity are also needed.

4.4 Subjectivity

Subjectivity is another notion sometimes equated with the qualitative or the phenomenal aspects of consciousness in the literature, but again there are good reason to recognize it, at least in some of its forms, as a distinct feature of consciousness — related to the qualitative and the phenomenal but different from each. In particular, the epistemic form of subjectivity concerns apparent limits on the knowability or even the understandability of various facts about conscious experience (Nagel 1974, Van Gulick 1985, Lycan 1996).
On Thomas Nagel's (1974) account, facts about what it is like to be a bat are subjective in the relevant sense because they can be fully understood only from the bat-type point of view. Only creatures capable of having or undergoing similar such experiences can understand their what-it's-likeness in the requisite empathetic sense. Facts about conscious experience can be best incompletely understood from an outside third person point of view, such as those associated with objective physical science. A similar view about the limits of third-person theory seems to lie behind claims regarding what Frank Jackson's (1982) hypothetical Mary, the super color scientist, could not understand about experiencing red because of her own impoverished history of achromatic visual experience.
Whether facts about experience are indeed epistemically limited in this way is open to debate (Lycan 1996), but the claim that understanding consciousness requires special forms of knowing and access from the inside point of view is intuitively plausible and has a long history (Locke 1688). Thus any adequate answer to the What question must address the epistemic status of consciousness, both our abilities to understand it and their limits (Papineau 2002, Chalmers 2003). (See the entry on self-knowledge).

4.5 Self-perspectival organization

The perspectival structure of consciousness is one aspect of its overall phenomenal organization, but it is important enough to merit discussion in its own right. Insofar as the key perspective is that of the conscious self, the specific feature might be called self-perspectuality. Conscious experiences do not exist as isolated mental atoms, but as modes or states of a conscious self or subject (Descartes 1644, Searle 1992, though pace Hume 1739). A visual experience of a blue sphere is always a matter of there being some self or subject who is appeared to in that way. A sharp and stabbing pain is always a pain felt or experienced by some conscious subject. The self need not appear as an explicit element in our experiences, but as Kant (1787) noted the “I think” must at least potentially accompany each of them.
The self might be taken as the perspectival point from which the world of objects is present to experience (Wittgenstein 1921). It provides not only a spatial and temporal perspective for our experience of the world but one of meaning and intelligibility as well. The intentional coherence of the experiential domain relies upon the dual interdependence between self and world: the self as perspective from which objects are known and the world as the integrated structure of objects and events whose possibilities of being experienced implicitly define the nature and location of the self (Kant 1787, Husserl 1929).
Conscious organisms obviously differ in the extent to which they constitute a unified and coherent self, and they likely differ accordingly in the sort or degree of perspectival focus they embody in their respective forms of experience (Lorenz 1977). Consciousness may not require a distinct or substantial self of the traditional Cartesian sort, but at least some degree of perspectivally self-like organization seems essential for the existence of anything that might count as conscious experience. Experiences seem no more able to exist without a self or subject to undergo them than could ocean waves exist without the sea through which they move. The Descriptive question thus requires some account of the self-perspectival aspect of experience and the self-like organization of conscious minds on which it depends, even if the relevant account treats the self in a relatively deflationary and virtual way (Dennett 1991, 1992).

4.6 Unity

Unity is closely linked with the self-perspective, but it merits specific mention on its own as a key aspect of the organization of consciousness. Conscious systems and conscious mental states both involve many diverse forms of unity. Some are causal unities associated with the integration of action and control into a unified focus of agency. Others are more representational and intentional forms of unity involving the integration of diverse items of content at many scales and levels of binding (Cleeremans 2003).
Some such integrations are relatively local as when diverse features detected within a single sense modality are combined into a representation of external objects bearing those features, e.g. when one has a conscious visual experience of a moving red soup can passing above a green striped napkin (Triesman and Gelade 1980).
Other forms of intentional unity encompass a far wider range of contents. The content of one's present experience of the room in which one sits depends in part upon its location within a far larger structure associated with one's awareness of one's existence as an ongoing temporally extended observer within a world of spatially connected independently existing objects (Kant 1787, Husserl 1913). The individual experience can have the content that it does only because it resides within that larger unified structure of representation. (See the entry on unity of consciousness.)

4.7 Intentionality and transparency

Conscious mental states are typically regarded as having a representational or intentional aspect in so far as they are about things, refer to things or have satisfaction conditions. One's conscious visual experience correctly represents the world if there are lilacs in a white vase on the table (pace Travis 2004), one's conscious memory is of the attack on the World Trade Center, and one's conscious desire is for a glass of cold water. However, nonconscious states can also exhibit intentionality in such ways, and it is important to understand the ways in which the representational aspects of conscious states resemble and differ from those of nonconscious states (Carruthers 2000). Searle (1990) offers a contrary view according to which only conscious states and dispositions to have conscious states can be genuinely intentional, but most theorists regard intentionality as extending widely into the unconscious domain. (See the entry on consciousness and intentionality.)
One potentially important dimension of difference concerns so called transparency, which is an important feature of consciousness in two interrelated metaphoric senses, each of which has an intentional, an experiential and a functional aspect.
Conscious perceptual experience is often said to be transparent, or in G.E. Moore's (1922) phrase “diaphanous”. We transparently “look through” our sensory experience in so far as we seem directly aware of external objects and events present to us rather than being aware of any properties of experience by which it presents or represents such objects to us. When I look out at the wind-blown meadow, it is the undulating green grass of which I am aware not of any green property of my visual experience. (See the entry on representational theories of consciousness.) Moore himself believed we could become aware of those latter qualities with effort and redirection of attention, though some contemporary transparency advocates deny it (Harman 1990, Tye 1995).

George Edward Moore

Conscious thoughts and experiences are also transparent in a semantic sense in that their meanings seem immediately known to us in the very act of thinking them (Van Gulick 1992). In that sense we might said to ‘think right through” them to what they mean or represent. Transparency in this semantic sense may correspond at least party with what John Searle calls the “intrinsic intentionality” of consciousness (Searle 1992).
Our conscious mental states seem to have their meanings intrinsically or from the inside just by being what they are in themselves, by contrast with many externalist theories of mental content that ground meaning in causal, counterfactual or informational relations between bearers of intentionality and their semantic or referential objects.
The view of conscious content as intrinsically determined and internally self-evident is sometimes supported by appeals to brain in the vat intuitions, which make it seem that the envatted brain's conscious mental states would keep all their normal intentional contents despite the loss of all their normal causal and informational links to the world (Horgan and Tienson 2002). There is continued controversy about such cases and about competing internalist (Searle 1992) and externalist views (Dretske 1995) of conscious intentionality.
Though semantic transparency and intrinsic intentionality have some affinities, they should not be simply equated, since it may be possible to accommodate the former notion within a more externalist account of content and meaning. Both semantic and sensory transparency obviously concern the representational or intentional aspects of consciousness, but they are also experiential aspects of our conscious life. They are part of what it's like or how it feels phenomenally to be conscious. They also both have functional aspects, in so far conscious experiences interact with each other in richly content-appropriate ways that manifest our transparent understanding of their contents.

 William James

4.8 Dynamic flow

The dynamics of consciousness are evident in the coherent order of its ever changing process of flow and self-transformation, what William James (1890) called the “stream of consciousness.” Some temporal sequences of experience are generated by purely internal factors as when one thinks through a puzzle, and others depend in part upon external causes as when one chases a fly ball, but even the latter sequences are shaped in large part by how consciousness transforms itself.
Whether partly in response to outer influences or entirely from within, each moment to moment sequence of experience grows coherently out of those that preceded it, constrained and enabled by the global structure of links and limits embodied in its underlying prior organization (Husserl 1913). In that respect, consciousness is an autopoietic system, i.e., a self-creating and self-organizing system (Varela and Maturana 1980).
As a conscious mental agent I can do many things such as scan my room, scan a mental image of it, review in memory the courses of a recent restaurant meal along with many of its tastes and scents, reason my way through a complex problem, or plan a grocery shopping trip and execute that plan when I arrive at the market. These are all routine and common activities, but each involves the directed generation of experiences in ways that manifest an implicit practical understanding of their intentional properties and interconnected contents (Van Gulick 2000).
Consciousness is a dynamic process, and thus an adequate descriptive answer to the What question must deal with more than just its static or momentary properties. In particular, it must give some account of the temporal dynamics of consciousness and the ways in which its self-transforming flow reflects both its intentional coherence and the semantic self-understanding embodied in the organized controls through which conscious minds continually remake themselves as autopoietic systems engaged with their worlds.
A comprehensive descriptive account of consciousness would need to deal with more than just these seven features, but having a clear account of each of them would take us a long way toward answering the “What is consciousness?” question.

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