Nagel presents determinism as “the circumstances before an action determine that it will happen, and rule out any other possibility.” These circumstances including an individual’s sum of experiences, knowledge, etc, all contribute to this. I think this is an accurate view to believe in but I disagree with Nagel’s point that if something was determined to happen because of one’s experiences it is okay. For example, if someone grew up seeing their parents always making poor decisions, it doesn’t justify them making poor choices when they grown up. Every individual needs to think about their choices and need to understand what is morally right and wrong. If we don’t point out someone’s faults they will be inclined to make the same mistake again.

I also really liked Nagel’s idea that “free action is a basic feature of the world, and it can’t be analyzed.” But in theory everything around a person dictates the course of an action whether it be circumstances, prior experiences, or even people around. For example, ask the question why someone would steal just to steal? Clearly it may be something they can’t afford, or they may have just lost their job. But every action has to have some precursor.

I think that consciousness is a something that can easily be debated between philosophers yet I personally think that a consciousness that has grown and experienced things in a span of time in the mind is what makes a person, a person. Having a consciousness and it having evolved and had the experiences it did is what makes someone a person. Without these experiences and everything that someone experienced throughout their consciousness is what makes someone unique and able to have all the thought processes and feelings and emotions tied into being “human”. In the example we talked about in class, with a computer having the mind of someone, I still think that computer can in no way be human. It hasn’t experienced nearly half of what the person himself has. The computer hasn’t grown with the person and the experiences so it in no way can be a human. Being a human, to me relies on consciousness and the mind and it’s experiences.

Free will can be defined as the capacity unique to persons that allows us to control our actions. To many philosophers, free will is one of the most difficult questions to answer in metaphysics. Many people who are not involved in answering these questions wonder why people bother pondering or even caring them at all and the main reason is related to free action and moral responsibility. The example that the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy uses to explain free action is ” a woman owns a dog and does not want to walk the dog but knows the dog needs exercise. Even though she really does not want to walk the dog in the cold, she decides that the best decision is to walk the dog.” This is free action; the woman must decide if she is going to walk the dog before she actually walks him.  If human actions result from the rational capacities of humans, shown in this example, then we see that free action depends on free will – “to say that an agent acted freely is minimally to say that the agent was successful in carrying out a free volition or choice” (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). In regards to the relationship between free will and moral responsibility, if an agent does not have free will then the agent is not morally responsible for his/her actions. If a person was forced to steal a car, that person is not morally responsible because it was not an action of free will. The importance of free will is more easily described when relating it to free action and moral responsibility, because the importance becomes more significant.

While researching the idea of consciousness that we have been discussing in class I came across an article published this summer entitled “Scientists discover the on-off switch for human consciousness deep within the brain.” The consciousness discovered by these neuroscientists (which is still in the very early stages of research) seems slightly similar to what Chalmers would call our “inner-movie consciousness.” They discovered that when a certain area of the brain of a woman was stimulated, the woman lost “consciousness” but was still awake. Where the traditional view of consciousness might be that of being awake or not awake, this part of the brain (the claustrum) certainly points to a more philosophical view of consciousness, which is possibly being controlled by a physiological area in the brain. This discovery, which again is still in its very early stages, seems to point towards property dualism. As a neuroscience major, I hope and believe that more research like this will begin to materialize, and that even the consciousness that Chalmers describes will be able to be explained by a physical entity in the brain. It’s important to understand that brain research is essentially in its infancy, so when Chalmers says that perhaps science will never be able to understand consciousness, that is probably a bit of a stretch.

Here’s a link to the article if anyone is interested: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/185865-scientists-discover-the-on-off-switch-for-human-consciousness-deep-within-the-brain

Even though functionalism was not my assigned definition, I enjoyed listening and discussing the viewpoint of functionalists and whether or not this was a good theory of consciousness to believe in. I believe functionalism is a better alternative to behaviorism and the identity theory because it encompasses some aspects of both. Functionalists believe that purely the functional roles control the different mental states. This includes the behavioral side of mental states as well as the physical side, such as neural activity and physiological sensations. Some may be able to criticize that the nature of consciousness is not functional even though it may have functional characteristics. This includes the idea that people exist in the world without a conscious, even though this is a controversial idea. I think consciousness is mainly what makes a living, breathing, functioning human being a person. I do not think that there are humans that exist without a consciousness, and even if these such humans did exist, I do not think they would be considered “people”. They may act and behave the way we do, but that missing piece of human consciousness would keep them from understanding what ‘normal’ people (conscious people) feel and believe.

In his ted talk, I found the first theory Chalmers used to explain Consciousness to be very interesting. That consciousness is fundamental  and that it can’t be explained in terms of anything more basic and that any beliefs or ideas from their are simply built upon it just as anything relating to time or space can only be built upon them. I think it needs to be viewed this way because any of the studies done in this area have all associated some other variable with consciousness. And even the idea of one having a conscious is debated by some. No evidence for consciousness even exists in the physical world and when we try to find evidence all we find is more unanswered phenomena, Chalmers first theory therefore seems to make a lot of sense.

Based on the research that I did for the mind and consciousness session; which was interactionism vs. epiphenomenalism, I looked more into them after class and I personally think that the interactionism thought process is more convincing than epiphenomenalism. Just like we discussed in class, interactionism is the idea that the mind and body are two separate entities yet they impact each other. I agree with this, I think that both the mind and body control different parts of a person yet they are fully capable of impacting each other. An example is stress. When some one is stressed out, that’s a mental thing associated with the mind yet it is scientifically proven that being stressed weakens the immune system and a person tends to get physically sick if they’ve been stressed for a period of time. An example of the body impacting the mind is, let’s say, when you’re working out and you lift a heavy weight, you begin to feel a stress on your arms. This physical stress leads your mind to think that you can’t lift a weight that heavy and you begin to tell yourself you can’t do it. Because of these examples, I think that interactionism is the most convincing idea of consciousness in the argument of that and epiphenomenalism.

The Himba are a tribe from Northern Namibia. They do not classify blue and green differently, the way we do in Western Culture, but they do differentiate between many different shades of green. The tribe was tested and had difficulty discerning between blues and greens that Westerners could easily differentiate between, but had no trouble telling the difference between shades of green that are almost identical to Western eyes. Further, the English language has 11 different color categories while the Himba only have 5 different color categories.

This also shows how linguistic differences can affect the way that different people perceive color. While it is hard to quantify the ways that people perceive color, this is one example of a possible explanation for why people perceive color differently.

I found this article and thought it was helpful for relating the class discussion to recent news in the court system regarding same sex marriage. I liked how this article specifically showed what states have legalized same sex marriage, what states have struck down gay marriage bans (making the legalization of gay marriage in these states more promising), and where gay marriage bans are still upheld. This article discusses the future of gay marriage legalization in these states a lot, and I think that once the case goes to the Supreme Court, which will happen sooner or later, I think that gay marriage will be officially legalized. Since the majority of the US has legalized gay marriage, the acceptance of gay marriage has increased greatly in the past decade. I can easily see this trend continuing to rise in the future and seeing these marriage bans in the four states being declared unconstitutional. The article link is copied below for anyone who wants to read more about it!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/us/appeals-court-upholds-same-sex-marriage-ban.html?_r=0

I think Corvino made some very interesting points in his videos. I specifically found his video about gay marriage being a threat to religious freedom very interesting. One thing he explained was the difference between civil marriage and religious marriage. While I understood what this meant, I never previously looked at the issue in this sense. Because of media coverage, I always just heard individuals bickering about it being wrong or right and individuals citing sacred texts such as the Bible to understand the definition of marriage. Another point he made was that he understands why people don’t want to recognize legal marriage for relationships they disapprove of. This made me think of the scenario in which a father doesn’t approve of the man his daughter may be seeing. In most cases the girl is going to continue to see the man she likes regardless of whether her father disapproves. The same goes for gay marriage, even if gay marriage is never fully legalized by the federal government, individuals will still find a way to be together. Corvino also specifically talked about what freedom of religion meant. And one point he made was that by being tolerant of all religions we need to be tolerant of what that religion believes in and approves of such as same-sex unions. We can’t pick and choose what we think is right or wrong. Of course if a religion says it is okay to physically harm someone, it is okay if outside forces intervene, but things like marriage I think fall into a different category and if freedom of religion is truly valued, people need to learn what it means to also be tolerant of the practices that take place in other religions.