Lebenswelt

Program of the International Conference of Religious Doctrines and the Mind-Body Problem

2011-02-26T13:34:00.000-08:00

Agenda

The International Conference of

Religious Doctrines and the Mind-Body Problem

March, 9 and 10, 2011

Islamic Sciences and Culture Academy

The Center for Islamic Theology and Philosophy

Opening
Registration and Inauguration Speech	Wednesday, March 9, 2011	8:00-10:00

Seminar 1

Afterlife and the Mind-Body Problem

Place: The Main Hall of the Conference Center of Islamic Propagation Office

Wednesday March, 9, 2011

	Topic: Incipience and Eternity of the Soul/The Fall
10:00-10:30	Amir Dastmalchian (Islamic College, London)	Swinburne: the Endowment of Life and the Soul
10:30-11:00	Martin Lembke (Lund University, Sweden)	Out of Eden: Evolution and the Fall
11:00-11:30	Mohammad Miri (IKERI, Qom, Iran)	The Sadraean View of the Incipience and Eternity of the soul
11:30-12:00	Gholamreza Fayyazi (IKERI, Qom, Iran)	The Material Origination of the Soul in Sadra

Wednesday March, 9, 2011

	Topic: The Intermediate State and Prior Worlds
15:00-15:30	Ahmad Reza Honari	Perfection and Free Will in Barzakh
15:30-16:00	Daniel Berchie (Valley View University, Ghana)	Intermediate State of the Soul
Break
16:30-17:00	Robert Osei-Bonsu (Valley View University, Ghana)	Purgatory: A Study of the Historical Development
17:00-17:30	Ali Afzali (Iranian Institute of Philosophy, Tehran, Iran)	The Soul and Body in the Pre-Birth Worlds of Zar

Thursday March 10, 2011

	Topic: Immortality and Afterlife
9:00-9:30	Reza Akbari (Imam Sadiq University, Tehran, Iran)	The Implications of Avicenna’s Psychology on his Conception of Immortality
9:30-10:00	Jari Kaukua (University of Jyvaskyla, Finland)	The Dualist Afterlife: Avicenna and Mulla Sadra
10:00-10:30	Hassan Yousofian (IKERI, Qom, Iran)	Averroes’s Theory of the Unity of the Rational Soul and the Denial of the Immortality
Break
11:00-11:30	Michael Sigrist (George Washington University, USA)	Resurrectionism and the Bodily Criterion of Personal Identity from Early to Reformation-Era Christianity
11:30-12:00	Yasser Khoshnevis (Sharid University, Iran)	Substance Emergentism and the Resurrection
12:00-12:30	Ragab Abdelmonsef (Egypt)	Heavenly Blessings and the Soul-Body Relation
Seminar 2
The Nature of Human Persons in Theology, Philosophy and Scriptures
Place: The Seminar Hall of the Islamic Sciences and Culture Academy

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

	Topic: Mind-Body Theories in Islamic Theology
10:00-10:30	Mohammad Taghi Sobhani (ISCA, Qom, Iran)	Soul-Body Theories in Early Muslim Theologians
10:30-11:00	Alinaghi Khodayari (Qom, Iran)	Soul-Body Theories in Middle Islamic Theology
11:00-11:30	Mohammad Biabani (Al al-Bait Institute, Qom, Iran)	Soul-Body Theory in Tafkik School (Mirza Mahdi Esfahani)
11:30-12:00	Ahmad Snobar (Jordan)	Immateriality of the Soul for Some Ash’arite Theologians
12:00-12:30	Idris Samawi Hamid (University of Colorado, USA)	Philosophical Proof for Bodily Resurrection According to Shaykh Ahmad Ahsai

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

	Topic: Scriptures and the Mind-Body Problem
15:00-15:30	Alireza Alebouyeh (ISCA, Qom, Iran)	Immortality and Multi-Aspectuality of Humans in Quran
15:30-16:00	Hassan Mo’allemi (Baqir al-Olum University, Qom, Iran)	The Nature and Characteristics of the Soul in Quran
16:00-16:30	Reza Berenjkar (University of Tehran, Iran)	The Soul in Quran and Hadith
Break
17:00-17:30	Daniel Bediako (Valley View University, Ghana)	Corinthians 5:5 and its Implications for the Mind-Body Problem
17:30-18:00	Shafiq Joradah (Al-Ma'arif al-Hikmiah Center, Lebanon)	The Son of the Mud and the Darkness of the Unknown Self

Thursday, March 10, 2011

	Topic: Philosophical Views on the Mind-Body Problem
9:00-9:45	Edward Wierenga (University of Rochester, USA)	Cartesian and Neo-Cartesian Arguments for Dualism
9:45-10:30	Lynne Baker (University of Amherst, Massachusetts, USA)	Persons without Immaterial Souls
Break
11:00-11:30	Abdorasoul Obudiat (IKERI, Qom, Iran)	Problems for the Mind-Body Relation
11:30-12:00	Edmund Runggladier (University of Innsbruck, Austria)	Immortality in the Arristotelian Christian tradition
12:00-12:30	Mansour Nasiri (ISCA, Qom, Iran)	Allameh Tabatabaei’s View on the Soul-Body Relation

Seminar 3

Cognition, Morality and Religious Beliefs and the Mind-Body Problem

Place: 40-Person Hall of the Conference Center of the Islamic Sciences and Propagation Office

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

	Topic: Cognition and the Mind-Body Problem
10:00-10:30	Samir Abuzaid (Egypt)	The Problem of Consciousness and its Solution in terms of the Separation and Conjunction Method
10:30-11:00	Morteza Erfani (University of Sistan, Zahedan, Iran)	The Immateriality of the Soul and the Perception in Quran
11:00-11:30	Ahmad Va’ezi (ISCA, Qom, Iran)	Sadraean View on the Role of the Body in Perception
11:30-12:00	Discussion	Is Cognition (Perception and Intellection) an Immaterial Property?

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

	Topic: Happiness, Morality and the Mind-Body Problem
15:00-15:30	Yarali Firouzja’ei (Baqir Al-Olum University, Qom, Iran)	Happiness and the Stages of the Soul in Farabi’s View
15:30-16:00	Hadi Sadeqi (Dar al-Hadith, Qom, Iran)	The Soul’s Gender and the Islamic Doctrine of Justice
Break
16:30-17:00	Ebrahim Alipour (ISCA, Qom, Iran)	Images of the Corpse in Rumi’s Poetry
17:00-17:30	Sima Dehkordi (Tehran, Iran)	Human Dignity and the Sadraean Soul-Body Theory

Thursday, March 10, 2011

	Topic: God, Prophecy, and the Mind-Body Problem
9:00-9:30	Muhammad Legenhausen (IKERI, Qom, Iran)	The Mind of God
9:30-10:00	Alireza Fazeli (Yasouj University, Iran)	The Characteristics of Prophetic Imagination in Aquinas
10:00-10:30	Hamidreza Khademi (Qom University, Iran)	Revelation and Miracles in Avicenna’s Psychology
Break
11:00-11:30	Zahra Poursina (Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran)	The Influence of Non-doxic on the Doxic Aspects of the Soul in Ghazali’s View
11:30-12:00	S. Mohammad Akbarian (ISCA, Qom, Iran)	Human as the Vicar of God and the Nature of the Soul
12:00-12:30	Morteza Yousofi-Rad (ISCA, Qom, Iran)	Imamah on the Basis of the Islamic Peripatetic View of the Soul-Body

Closing Session

Place: The Main Hall of the Conference Center of the Islamic Sciences and Propagation Office

Thursday, March 10, 2011


15:00-15:30	Ahmad Va’ezi (Head of Islamic Sciences and Propagation Office)	A Report of the Conference
15:30-16:00	Mohammad Taghi Sobhani (Scientific Secretariat of the Conference)	A Report of the Seminars
16:00-17:00	Ayatollah Javadi Amoli (Distinguished Muslim Philosopher)
17:00-18:30	Edward Wierenga, Lynne Baker, Sobhani,	Religious Dualism vs. Religious Materialism

A Prolegomenon to the Research on Islamic Doctrines and the Mind-Body Problem

2010-11-01T07:11:00.000-07:00

This is an intoduction of a developing paper. Comments welcome

A Prolegomenon to the Research on Islamic Doctrines

and the Mind-Body Problem

Yasser Pouresmail

Islamic Sciences and Culture Academy (ISCA)

pouresmail@isca.ac.ir

Abstract: In this paper I shall present an outline of the research on Islamic doctrines and the mind-body problem. To do this, I will first enumerate the Islamic doctrines which have implications for theories of the mind-body problem or are accountable in terms of some theory of the mind-body relation, such as different versions of dualism or materialism. In this paper, the Jeudo-Christian Doctrines will be mentioned by way of comparison. I will then give dualistic, materialistic or other accounts for each of these doctrines. If there is any literature about the doctrine, I will give an introductory formulation of it and if there is no literature, I will try to carve the possible theories which can explain the doctrine. In the introduction of this paper, I will make general remarks about religious dualism and materialism in both Christian and Islamic traditions and the religious motives behind them. Furthermore, I will discuss the presuppositions and the methodology of this research.

0. Introduction: Religious Dualism and Materialism

The Abrahamic religious worldview consists in a particular conception of the world and its nature, its relation with God or a Superior Being, and the nature of the human persons which seems to be the most fundamental of all. For in case of any change in our conception of the human person, we would come up with a different conception of God, prayers, prophecy, revelation, the afterlife and other matters of doctrine that constitute the overall religious worldview. There might be different conceptions of the human persons; one might take them to be part of the natural world, to be natural or material entities, or one might take them to have an otherworldly component or an immaterial part. With a materialist conception, people would have a quite different understanding of religious beliefs and a different approach to the religious life from the one they will have according to a dualistic conception of the human person.

Within Christianity the historically dominant view was mind-body dualism, by means of which many of its doctrines were explained. Apparently the view originates from Plotinus [reference] which has its roots in Platonic dualism of souls and bodies. However, Thomas Aquinas [reference] –inspired by Avicenna- formulated an Aristotelian hylomorphic version of dualism, which gives a more unified picture of the soul-body relation. Only recently materialistic accounts of Christian doctrines –and in particular the doctrine of resurrection- have been offered by philosophers such as Peter van Inwagen, Lynne Rudder Baker [other materialists with reference]. In the light of this movement which might be called "Christian materialism", more sophisticated versions of "Christian dualism" have been developed by philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga, Charles Taliaferro, Stuart Goetz, [others with reference]. The literature so far has been mostly focused on issues like resurrection, death or purgatory and little discussion was devoted to other relevant doctrines such as the variety of doctrines concerning God, prophecy and religious morality.

In the Islamic tradition, however, the history is much different. Though dualistic theories which emphasize the immateriality of the human persons entered the history of Islamic thought since the so-called "translation period" [date] when Greek texts of sciences and philosophy were translated into Arabic, the orthodox view largely held by Mutakalimin (Muslim theologians) and Foqaha (jurists or scholars of the Islamic Shari'ah) was that humans are not immaterial entities; some of these scholars believed that humans are nothing but their bodies and some of them believed that humans consists of a body and fine-grained material soul (e.g. a vaporous soul). Along with Muslim theologians, Muslim philosophers of the Peripatetic tradition like al-Farabi, Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Averroes (Ibn Roshd) and others were committed to a dualistic view of the human nature with both Platonic and Aristotelian components; a view which was accused by some theologians and jurists of heresy; for example, Majlisi [date], a Famous Muslim theologian and muhaddith (a scholar of hadith: religious narrations of the prophet and Imams), stated that any person who believes in the immateriality of any creature except God (from humans to angels) is an apostate. By the time Mulla Sadra's [date] philosophical system was formulated, in which most of the Islamic doctrines were systematically explained, things started to change. Most scholars began to believe that an immaterial soul which has emerged or evolved from the body is the most compatible theory with the Islamic doctrines. In fact, Sadra's project was to make the triad of religious doctrines, mystical teachings, and philosophical principles (or revelations, mystical experiences, and philosophical reflections) compatible with one another. In contemporary Islamic thought, dualism or immaterialism is generally acknowledged as the orthodox view. Recently however an anti-philosophical or back-to-tradition movement in Iran has emerged which believes that the traditional Greek philosophy cannot be a source of religious beliefs; this movement, which has a considerable following, especially in the Islamic seminaries of Mashahd, is often called the school of Tafkik [that is, separation, so called because of its separation of religious belief from philosophical teaching]. Proponents of this approach strongly reject dualism and immaterialism; they believe that humans consist of a body and a soul, but the soul is a fine-grained (latif) material entity, and some of them, like Morvarid [date] and Tehrani [date], have interesting philosophical arguments for this view which might be called "materialistic dualism". They are focused on issues of bodily resurrection and prophecy as their religious motives for materialism. They believe that with dualism, we cannot at the end explain bodily resurrection; the physical descriptions of resurrection given by Qur'an. Also we cannot account for why prophets have been sent to guide the perplexed, since if we have an immaterial soul, they believe, we would necessarily know everything which is to our good, and we would not then need prophets to tell us good from bad.

In this paper, I try to give a list of all relevant Islamic doctrines, as comprehensive as possible (with references to Jeudo-Christian doctrines as well). Then under each of the doctrines, I shall partition the logical space of possible mind-body theoretical accounts of them. For example, under revelations or vahy I will try to give possible dualistic or materialistic accounts.

The paper is divided into 5 sections. Section 1 is mostly an exegetical account of scriptural texts in which materialism or dualism are said to be interpreted. Section 2 is about different materialistic or dualistic accounts of a variety of doctrines concerning the afterlife (the nature of death, purgatory, resurrection and the hereafter). Section 3 is about the implications of the doctrines regarding the nature of God, God-human relations, and the nature of man, for dualism or materialism. Finally, section 4 will be about the dualistic or materialistic accounts of prophecy-related doctrines.

0.1. Presuppositions and Methodology

The project of explaining certain religious doctrines and beliefs in terms of a specific mind-body theory rests upon the assumptions that (1) religious doctrines are factual; that is, they refer to facts of the matter; let us call this the “factuality assumption”, and (2) none of the materialistic, dualistic or other mind-body theories is a basic religious doctrine itself; rather they are different possible conceptions we can have about religious beliefs; let us call this the “neutrality assumption”. In what follows I will discuss the two assumptions and then I will talk about the methodology of the research.

A. Factuality Assumption. According to the factuality assumption, the religious doctrines such as resurrection and revelation refer to facts of the matter. The factuality assumption rests upon a literalist view about the language of the religion, according to which the expressions in a religious are taken as literal. For example, the religious proposition that “the dead will be resurrected in the Dooms Day” means that there will be a day when the dead will live again and will be punished or awarded for their deeds. An alternative conception would be a metaphorical view according to which the expressions in a religion are metaphorical. For example, the religious proposition that “the dead will be resurrected in the Dooms Day” should not be taken literal; rather it just means that our everyday actions must be done as though there will be a punishment or award even after the death. With the metaphorical view, the research program of “religious doctrines and the mind-body problem” cannot just begin, since it takes the religious doctrines literally. Thus for this project to kick off, we need to presuppose a factual assumption.

B. Neutrality Assumption. According to the neutrality assumption, none of the mind-body theories are part of the basic religious teachings. By “basic religious teachings” I mean the religious beliefs which are part of the religion with no controversy such that a person who does not believe in them cannot be counted as a religious person. The belief in God is a basic teaching of monotheistic religions; scholars of these religions have no controversy among themselves to ascribe the teaching to the religion and a person who does not believe in it cannot be counted as a member of these religious communities (we cannot have an atheist Muslim, for instance). The materiality or immateriality of the human soul is not a basic religious teaching, since there is controversy among the scholars of monotheistic religions about this. For example, within Islam mutakalimins make religious arguments for the materiality of the soul and Muslim philosophers argue for its immateriality.[1] If one counts any of the mind-body theories as a basic religious teaching, they will not be able to carry out the research program of religious doctrines and the mind-body problem.

[1] It should be noted that some mukalimins accuse philosophers of heredity, but this does not mean that materialism is a basic religious doctrine; rather it is because of the implications they thought dualism would have for the soul’s being increate (not being created by God).

Philosophical Perspectives on Spatial Perception; organized by Farid Masrour in Harvard University

2010-10-26T08:15:00.000-07:00

Philosophical Perspectives

on Spatial Perception

October 30-31, 2010

All talks will take place in the Fong Auditorium, Boylston Hall.

Please do not cite or reference any of the available papers without the express

permission of the author.

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

9:30-11:15 Speaker: Farid Masrour (Harvard University)

“Perceptual Geometry and the Nature of Perceptual Experience”

Commentator: Michael Tye (University of Texas at Austin)

11:25-1:10 Speaker: James Van Cleve (University of Southern California)

"Berkeley and Reid on Perception of Depth"

You may read an abstract of this paper here.

The following handouts are recommended reading before the talk:

Primary handout:

* "Berkeley and Reid on Perception of Depth"

Auxiliary handouts:

* "Pitcher on Berkeley on Immediacy"

* "French's Argument"

* "Reid's Geometry of Visibles"

An earlier handout, "Reid v. Berkeley on Three Puzzles of Vision,"

while no longer being referenced in this talk, may still be of interest.

Commentator: Gary Hatfield (University of Pennsylvania)

2:10-3:55 Speaker: David Bennett (Brown University)

“Seeing Shape”

Professor Bennett's paper, "How The World is Measured Up in Size Experience," is recommended as a companion reading to this talk.

Commentator: Brad Thompson (Southern Methodist University)

4:05-5:50 Speaker: Robin Jeshion (University of Southern Caifornia)

“Descriptivism and the Representation of Spatial Location”

Commentator: David Chalmers (Australian National University, NYU)

7:00 Dinner: Location TBA

Sunday October 31st, 2010

9:30-11:15 Speaker: Jérôme Dokic (Jean Nicod Institute)

"Perception without representation: The case of spatial relations"

Commentator: Sebastian Watzl (Harvard University)

11:25-1:10 Speaker: Elizabeth Spelke (Harvard University)

"TBA"

Commentator: Ned Block (NYU)

2:10-4:00 Roundtable Discussion:

Gordon Belot (University of Pittsburgh)

Sean Kelly (Harvard University)

Mohan Matthen (University of Toronto)

Alison Simmons (Harvard University)

Maja Spener (Oxford University)

Organizers: Farid Masrour, Susanna Siegel

The Crucial Test of Ineffability!

2010-08-18T00:48:00.000-07:00

Which objects or properties are ineffable, that is, impossible to be conveyed interpersonally? Traditionally philosophers have said that secondary qualities or what we call qualia today are ineffable. Here I present a crucial test for ineffability with which we can tell the ineffable properties from the effable ones.
The Test of Ineffability
In order to test the ineffability of an object or property, take the word associated with it, W. Now imagine a person who knows all the words in the language except W, and he has previously encountered with instances of the property or object that W names. Imagine that this person is a room in which that object or property is located. You try to describe the meaning of W to her with using the rest of the words that she knows, if she could identify the relevant object or property through your description, that would be effable, otherwise ineffable.
For example, Ted knows all the ordinary words in English except the word "table". You are in a room in which there is a table. You describe the table to him as a four-leg object with a flat top. It seems that this description would enable Ted to identify the table in the room. Therefore, table is effable.
Now Jasmine knows all the ordinary words in English except "red". You are in a room in which there is a red object. You describe redness to her as an energetic, happy, light, brilliant color. Can she identify redness in the room where there are other colors such as green, orange, etc? It seems that she couldn't. Therefore, redness is an ineffable property.

Dermot Moran clarifying Brentano's Thesis

2010-07-22T03:54:00.000-07:00

Dermot Moran's "Brentano's Thesis" (his inaugural address at the Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and Mind Association) is really insightful and enlightening. For decades now, Brento's thesis has become a cliche in the intentionality and consciousness literature. Most people take Brentano to have highlighted intentionality as a feature of the mental which resists a physicalistic or materialistic account. Some contemporaries have misunderstood Brentano's "intentional inexistence" as meaning an intentionality the object of which is absent or non-existent. Moran tries to shed light on all these misunderstandings surrounding the historical Brentano.

1. Brentano didn't raise intentionality as a feature which marks the mental off the physical. In fact, Brentano has a phenomenological interpretation of the physical based on our perceptual phenomenology. (note that Brentano never used the term "intentionality"; he just used the term "intentional inexitence".)

2. Intentional inexistence means an inner existence which is directed towards contents. Inexistence doesn't mean non-existence; it just means inner existence. Twardowski has interpreted the intentional inexistence as phenomenal existence.

3. The materialism or reductionism debate is not a concern of Brentano's method of phenomenology or "descriptive psychology". So he wouldn't have any idea about how intentionality could be an argument against materialism.

Objectivity of pain-qualia

2010-07-21T04:08:00.000-07:00

Why does it seem implausible to us (or at least some of us) that the quality of pain is located in a part of our body (or in our nervous system), just as the red quality might be totally out there in the world (in the red object out there), and not in our subjective experience? In fact, when we compare intuitions in the two cases, the latter seems more implausible than the former; indeed most people are inclined to take pains as lying in our subjective experiences or as a quality of our experience rather than a quality of a part of body, though they might find it plausible to take red qualia as existing out there in the red objects (though some philosophers fight this). The objectivity of pains -that is, the claim that pains are qualities of parts of bodies; qualities just out there, which are represented translucently by the mirrors of our experiences- might not be that implausible. If we establish that any type of our experiences is to represent a particular type of content to us, which is merely detectable through the channel of that experience, it could be plausible to take pains as objective qualities out there, and not subjective qualities of our experiences.
However, the fact that pains intuitively seem to many people as qualities of experiences, and not of external objects (in this case, body parts) is due to the way our phenomenology makes things appear objective to us. On some accounts, our phenomenology makes things appear objective to us, when we perceive those things deep in the space. According to this account, since pains are not perceived deep in the space, they don't appear objective to us. On another account, if the expectation that X doesn't move with the movement of body is satisfied, then X would be experienced or appear as objective. Such an expectation is not satisfied in the case of pains. However, this is all compatible with the fact that pains are really objective, but because of the way they appear in our experiences, they look non-objective to us, and this is the basis of our intuitions that pains are non-objective. But such intuitions should not be taken seriously!
What are your thoughts?

International Conference of Religious Doctrines and the Mind-Body Problem

2010-03-08T23:11:00.000-08:00

International Conference of Religious Doctrines and the Mind-Body Problem

Sponsor: Islamic Sciences and Culture Academy (ISCA)

Date: 2011, March 9-10

Email: icrm@isca.ac.ir

Postal Address: Iran, Qom, P.S. Box: 37185/3688

Tel/Fax: (098)251-774 80 64

Website (not completely constructed yet): www.seminars.ir/icrm

Invited Speakers:

1. Charles Taliaferro, St. Olaf College

2. Lynne Rudder Baker, Amherst, Massachussets

3. Edward Wierenga, Rochester, New York

4. Uwe Meixner, Regensburg, Germany

5. Richard Taylor, Marquette University

6. Sajjad Rizvi, Exeter, UK

The Topic of the Conference

The conference is centered on the following problem:

Which theory of the mind-body relation can give the best account of relevant religious doctrines, such as resurrection and purgatory?

Definitions:

1) Religious Doctrines: beliefs that have been stated as foundations of the religion in reliable sources and their obvious logical implications.

2) Relevant religious doctrines: religious doctrines that imply a specific conception of the nature of man and his characteristics, for example, the doctrine of an intermediate state (purgatory) implies a conception of the nature of man according to which he can survive the physical death, communicate with other persons in that world, etc.

3) mind-body problem: a metaphysical problem concerning the existence/non-existence or mode of existence of the minds in the world: do minds or mental states exist? If they exist, do they exist in a physical or a non-physical form?

Statement of the problem

The conference is NOT concerned with the following two problems:

1) Proving the religious doctrines through philosophical arguments, for example, trying to prove the truth of resurrection by some philosophical arguments. Papers concerning this will NOT be accepted.

2) Mere philosophical discussion of the mind-body problem, for example, formulating an argument for dualism without its implications for religious doctrines is NOT accepted in our conference.

Only the following approach IS accepted:

3) Statement of philosophical views about the mind-body relation and their implications for some relevant religious doctrines. For example, one can formulate a version of dualism (Avicenna, Augustine, Descartes, or his/her own version), then examine how that view can account for a religious doctrine, such as resurrection. In this approach, a particular philosophical theory of the mind-body relation is examined to see (1) whether it implies resurrection –for instance- or not, and (2) if so, what kind of resurrection –for instance- it implies: a physical version of resurrection or a non-physical.

Or one can state the religious details of a particular religious doctrine and find a mind-body theory that can provide the best explanation for it. One can –for instance- state the doctrine of resurrection with its scriptural details, and then examine a mind-body theory that gives the best account of those details. This way, some alternative theories should be compared to see which one is the best explanation.

The Website will be launched completely very soon; the English section is not available yet.
The Farsi Poster:

A Representationalist Account of Ineffability of Consciousness

2009-02-27T09:27:00.000-08:00

Iranian Center of Cognitive Science holds its third international Conference of Cognitive Science from March 3rd t0 March 5th. (Here's the link to the conference website: http://www.iccs.ir/e/pages.php?pid=20) I will present a lecture on ineffability of consciousness. I should thank Farid Masrour (NYU) for helping me develop the paper. Here's a summary of my representationalist idea about the topic.

There are two kinds of ineffability: descriptive and demonstrative. X is descriptively ineffable both for those who have experienced it before and those who have not. Our criterion for descriptive effability is that the description gives a subject S the ability to recognize X among other things; otherwise it is descriptively ineffable. Demonstrative effability is by intersubjectively pointing to X through definitions of the sort of “P1 is the P of X”. X might be intersubjective at one level, like pre-epistemological level, hence demonstratively effable relative to that level, but pure subjective at another, like epistemological level, hence demonstratively ineffable at that level. Phenomenal properties P are descriptively ineffable because of their primitiveness. P is identified with primitive representations R, and R is not describable since it is not preceded by more primitive representations to be described in their terms. This is how representationalism can deal with the descriptive ineffability of the phenomenal.

Qualia are demonstratively effable at a pre-epistemological level, because people ordinarily think of qualia as intersubjectively the same and this is what gives them the ability to demonstratively teach or learn qualia. However at an epistemological level, they are demonstratively ineffable, since the possibility of different qualia with different subjects can in no way be repudiated, thus they cannot be demonstrated at this level. This fact is explained in representational terms: qualia are different manners of representations and since these manners are internally determined, subjects have no access to each other’s internal manners of representations of things in the world, which in turn gives rise to epistemological skepticisms about their intersubjectivity, hence demonstrative ineffability at an epistemological level.

Therefore, as we can see, representationalism can handle the ineffability of the phenomenal in both descriptive and demonstrative senses.

Thick Perceptual Content in Aristotle’s Philosophy

2008-01-17T08:42:00.000-08:00

It appears that the perceptual content is, for Aristotle, thick, viz. it is not only rudimentary individual objects (unlike Plato in Theatetus), but also propositions and universals. By “perceptual content” I mean what is directly perceived. The fact of the matter is that we take propositions, dispositions, relations and universals to be the direct objects of various kinds of perceptions in our ordinary language; consider for instance (all examples are of the visual perception for convenience): (a) “I see the sharpness of the knife” (sharpness is a disposition), (b) “I see that John is going” (that John is going is a proposition), (c) “I see that the flood is destroying that little hut” (flood’s destroying the little hut is a causal relation), (d) “I see a man in you” (man is a universal). But some philosophers may not take these ordinary statements seriously and try to translate them into more deflationist statements such as: (a*) “I see the edge of the knife which has the disposition to cut”, (b*) “I see John in different places in continuous points of time”, (c*) “I see the flood and right after it, I see the destruction of the hut”, (d*) “I see an individual person (you) and I know by other non-perceptual means that you are a man-token”. Such deflationist strategy suggests a thin view of the perceptual contents, but inflationists hold a thick view of the perceptual contents, taking the ordinary expressions of perceiving the above phenomena literary.
I think Plato and Aristotle have opposing views on this issue, with the former maintaining a deflationist and the latter holding an inflationist view of perceptual experiences. They both have epistemological concerns for their respective views.

A draft of this idea is available here. Comments welcome.

A Collection On the Mind-Body Problem

2007-09-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

A collection of articles has been translated to Farsi and will appear soon in Iran, together with introductions to each part. The collection has five parts: dualism, behaviorism, identity theory, functionalism and eliminative materialism; it concludes with Kim's "Mind-Body Problem after 50 years" and McGinn's "Solving the Mind-Body Problem". I thank Ned Block for his detailed introduction to my translation of his "What Is Functionalism?" and "Troubles With Functionalism", Lynne Baker for hers to my translation of chapter 7 of her Saving Belief : "Instrumentalism: Back from the Brink?" and Dennett for his to my translation of his "True Believers". Here's Dennett's nice introduction:

Scientists are making dramatic progress on figuring out how the brain works. In a few special sorts of cases they are even quite good at saying how, and why, brains cause bodies to act as they do. The brain is an extraordinarily complex collection of biological mechanisms, but its operation is not too complex to resist science forever. Meanwhile, non-scientists—everyday folk, and even children—continue to do what they have always done: figure out what people are going to do by recognizing what they want, what they know, and how they intend to achieve their goals. Our anticipations are not always right; sometimes even our closest friends baffle us with their unexpected behavior, but in general we are confident in our expectations, and those expectations are confirmed in due course. For instance, we all casually risk our lives by riding in cars on highways, quite certain that the drivers in the oncoming cars (1) see us, (2) believe correctly that a collision would probably be fatal, (3) strongly desire not to die or to kill, and (4) know how to avoid that unwanted outcome by guiding their intentional behavior, safely steering their vehicles on non-collision courses. This is all obvious to us, and it is couched in the terms of what I have called “folk psychology”: seeing and hearing, believing and wanting, hopes, fears, intentions, decisions, and so forth. Minds are easier to read than brains! How do we do it? We do it by using a strategy—adopting a stance—that treats all people (and most animals, and even some robots) as rational agents. We do this instinctively, without having to understand the reasons why it works. This permits us to ignore the unbelievably messy and unknown details of their brains’ hardware and concentrate on the informational level, where much more simplified, if slightly risky, calculations can be effortlessly made. This is what I call the intentional stance. We can compare it to other strategies to understand both its power and the risks associated with it. It works because evolution has designed us to be quite good approximations of (ideally) rational agents. If we understand our competence at mind-reading in this way, many of the traditional conceptual problems about the relationship between mind and body dissolve. The huge gap between knowing and wanting on the one hand, and neurons and brain waves on the other hand, is accounted for in a scientifically conservative way: no miracles, no mysterious emergent properties, no ‘wonder tissue’. Minds are what brains do, seen from the perspective of the intentional stance.
Much of this account of the nature of folk psychology is now accepted by both the philosophical and scientific community, but there remain significant pockets of skepticism. There is a widespread belief that on this analysis beliefs and desires and thoughts do not emerge as “real enough” entities in their own right. I have tried to assuage that suspicion in subsequent essays, especially in “Real Patterns,” Journal of Philosophy, 1991. But “True Believers” remains the best introduction to the concept of intentional systems and the intentional stance we use to understand them.

Qualia

2007-04-29T06:12:00.000-07:00

I have finished the revision of my paper "Putting the Quality Back into Qualia". In this paper, I presented arguments against phenomenalism, and for representationalism. To allow for a qualia-analysis, I distinguished the concept of "qualia" from that of "phenomenality" and I also made a distinction between perceptual and sensational qualia. I presented different arguments for each. It's waiting to be published in the procedings of the first Annual Coloquium of Iranian Institute of Philosophy on Analytic Philosophy.

Analytic Philosophy in Iran

2007-03-18T08:55:00.000-07:00

I am elated that Iranian Institute of Philosophy has held its first Annual Colloquium on Analytic Philosophy. Though it wasn't specialized enough, it was a good move toward institutionalizing analytic philosophy in this land. I presented my paper on qualia. Now I'm working on a revision of this paper.