Philosophy of Mind

Philosophy of Mind is the study of how we think about thinking.

A daunting question for philosophy is, "What is a mind, and how does it interact with the brain, i.e the 'mind/body problem'?" The physical properties of brains are necessary, but not sufficient, to explain consciousness, just as the physical properties of bricks are necessary, but not sufficient, to explain architecture.

Another daunting question is “How can we know anything about the minds of others, i.e. ‘the problem of other minds’? We may have privileged information about what it is like to be ourselves, and we're quite sure that we are conscious, but how can we be sure that everyone else isn't a zombie? All we can really do is make inferences based on their publicly observable behavior. For example, if someone hops around wincing and saying “ouch”, I may infer that s/he feels the sensation that I call ‘pain’ since I display the same behavior in similar situations.

You know you are conscious when:

1. you have sentient experiences, that is, qualitative sensations, 'raw feels,' knowing 'what it is like' to have that experience, e.g. the sensation of seeing red or smelling a skunk
2. you introspect (you realize it is you who is seeing red or smelling skunk)
3. you access sensory and mental information, i.e. out of a barrage of incoming signals from your sense organs you focus your spotlight of attention on what is relevant (as directed by your emotions) and act on the information in some fashion (as directed by your will).
4. you have intentional states, i.e. you have beliefs, desires, thoughts, etc. about, for, toward, or of intentional objects, e.g. a desire for ice-cream, where ice-cream is the intentional object about which you enter into the intentional mental state of desire.