Philosophy of Mind: Brains, Consciousness, and Thinking Machines

(24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
Course No. 4278
Taught by Patrick Grim
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Ph.D., Boston University

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Nothing in the universe is more mysterious than how the human mind works. Do other people have a mind like yours? How do you know? Is your mind something distinct from your body? Or do ordinary physiological processes produce minds? Could a machine have a mind? What is consciousness? Do you have free will? Is everything you are now experiencing actually happening? Or is that an elaborate illusion created by the mind?

The mind reels at such questions! But philosophy provides powerful tools for investigating the mysteries of thinking, feeling, and perceiving.

What Is Your Mind?

The quest to understand the mind has motivated some of history's most profound thinkers, including Aristotle in antiquity, René Descartes in the 17th century, and William James in the 19th century. 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.

What does philosophy have to say? As Professor Patrick Grim points out, philosophers address the hardest questions of all: those that are unanswered and those that we aren't sure how to answer. In the scientific search for the mind, the role of philosophers is to sharpen our concepts, untangle the morass of questions, and systematically explore alternate approaches.

Your guide to this fascinating subject is Dr. Patrick Grim, an award-winning Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Philosophy of Mind: Brains, Consciousness, and Thinking Machines presents a clear, systematic, and compelling introduction to the philosophy of mind, examining all of the most intriguing questions and influential theories


Course Lecture Titles

1. The Dream, the Brain, and the Machine
2. The Mind-Body Problem
3. Brains and Minds, Parts and Wholes
4. The Inner Theater
5. Living in the Material World
6. A Functional Approach to the Mind
7. What Is It about Robots?
8. Body Image
9. Self-Identity and Other Minds
10. Perception—What Do You Really See?
11. Perception—Intentionality and Evolution
12. A Mind in the World
13. A History of Smart Machines
14. Intelligence and IQ
15. Artificial Intelligence
16. Brains and Computers
17. Attacks on Artificial Intelligence
18. Do We Have Free Will?
19. Seeing and Believing
20. Mysteries of Color
21. The Hard Problem of Consciousness
22. The Conscious Brain—2½ Physical Theories
23. The HOT Theory and Antitheories
24. What We Know and What We Don't Know