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Consciousness in Nature. A Russellian Approach
Mihálik, Jakub ; Hill, James (advisor) ; Hvorecký, Juraj (referee) ; Coleman, Sam (referee)
Jakub Mihálik: Consciousness in Nature. A Russellian Approach Abstract: This thesis attempts to provide a philosophical answer to the question of how phenomenal consciousness, or experience, can exist in the physical world, i.e. in the world as it is described by science. The thesis has three parts: In the first part (chapter 1) I explicate the concept of phenomenal consciousness and contrast it with other concepts of consciousness common in the literature. Moreover, I suggest that the project pursued in this thesis can be naturally viewed as a part of the more general project of trying to find a stereoscopic view of man, taken by Wilfrid Sellars to be a crucial task for contemporary philosophy. In the second part of the thesis (chapters 2 to 4) I offer a detailed evaluation of the attempts at a materialist reduction of consciousness. While in chapter 2 I explore and critique the approach of apriori physicalism (Dennett, Lewis, Rey, etc.), in chapters 3 and 4, I focus on the more recent doctrine of a posteriori physicalism and especially its most prominent variety called the phenomenal concept strategy (Loar, Papineau, Levin, Schroer, etc.). One problem with a posteriori physicalism is that, as Nida-Rümelin, Goff and others argue, the view cannot make sense of the plausible thesis that our phenomenal...
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Traces of/in the text
Mihálik, Jakub ; Bílek, Petr (advisor) ; Holý, Jiří (referee)
The author describes and critically reflects on some features of the discussions concerning the relation between the text and its interpretation that have been held mainly in the USA since the 1960s. The core of the essay is a critical evaluation of some theories of Stanley Fish (1938). Fish's insights are seen against the background of the more traditional - "formalist" and "new critical" models of interpretation. The author poses the question to what extend can the text and its meaning be conceived as something objectively given and to what extend should they, on the other hand, be seen as products of culturally or institutionally based interpretive strategies. The first two chapters look at two attempts at challenging the "new-critical" method of analysis according to which the exclusive object of critical attention should be the text itself. The first attempt (S. Fish) consists in turning the attention of the critic from the text towards the reader and her consciousness. The author sees this theory as problematic owing to the fact that the experience of the reader who reads in the way suggested by Fish will always be to a great extend a product of Fish's method. The description of her reading experience would then be no more than a description of one specific mode of reading. The second attempt (E.D....
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Berkeley's approach to Newtonian dynamics
Mihálik, Jakub ; Palkoska, Jan (referee) ; Hill, James (advisor)
The essay concerns Berkeley's reaction to Newton's dynamics. While Berkeley admires the usefulness, simplicity and generality of Newton's laws of motion, he is, none the less, concerned with their possible ontological implications. If we interpret Newton in a realist manner, his doctrines seem to imply that physical objects are active and are thus inconsistent with the basic principles of Berkeley's metaphysics, namely with the view that the only sources of activity in the universe are spirits. Berkeley tries to solve this conflict by offering an account of force according to which force is a mathematical hypothesis and which thus avoids metaphysical commitments. The author suggests that there is a tension between different claims that Berkeley makes about force in De motu and offers an interpretation of Berkeley's view in which he tries to avoid this tension. According to the offered interpretation, Berkeley's view of force is an instrumentalist one. In the last chapter various aspects of Berkeley's view of force as a mathematical hypothesis are considered. It is argued that even though such a view might seem to be in conflict with Berkeley's semantic and metaphysical views, it needn't be so if certain semantic considerations introduced in Berkeley's Alciphron are considered.
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