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Consciousness and the Self: the theories of John Searle and Antonio Damasio
Šebešová, Petra ; Palkoska, Jan (referee) ; Hill, James (advisor)
The thesis deals with the relationship of consciousness and the self, as it is present in the consciousness theories of John Searle and Antonio Damasio. Consciousness is taken by both authors as an essentially subjective phenomenon and it is analyzed as such. Yet at the same time, they take it to be a natural part of the physical world. First, Searle's arguments concerning the subjective nature of consciousness and the possibilities to study it scientifically are analyzed, together with objections against Searle's view. Then Searle's account of the self is presented. The author argues that this account is not sufficient to explain subjectivity more deeply. Presentation of Damasio's theory follows as a complement to Searle 's theory. Damasio takes the sense of self to be a necessary component of consciousness that is pre-reflectively present and appears in the form of feeling. This notion of the self is supported in the thesis for it allows for better understanding of the phenomenal aspects of consciousness and also forms a basis for a possible scientific research. Damasio's biological hypotheses concerning the emergence of the subjectivity is discussed and criticised though for presupposing the subject, which is yet to be explained by the theory.
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Personal identity and memory (Locke's theory of personal identity and its critical interpretation in analytical philosophy)
Kollmann, Jan ; Palkoska, Jan (referee) ; Hill, James (advisor)
The thesis deals with the relations between Locke's theory of personal identity, its "classical" critic, performed by Butler and Reid and its critical adoption amongst some authors of analytic philosophy (Grice, Quinton, Perry, Shoemaker). In the first part of the thesis, Locke is shown as the founder of a tradition that lays stress on the fundamental relation between the identity of persons over time and its memory or consciousness. We also distinguish the identity of person and the identity of man, this means person is understood as identical so far as its consciousness reaches, independently of the identity of material and/or immaterial substance in which the identity of man consists. Serious problems with Locke's conception, such as amnesia and paramnesia are discussed in this part too. In the second part of the thesis, classical objections against Locke's theory are analyzed - Reid's "brave officer paradox" and Butler's objection of petitio principii; Reid's and Butler's distinction between 86 the identity of persons and other things. In the third part we discuss two conceptions by contemporary authors (Grice and Quinton) who defend Locke's attitude against the classical objections and who assert, that personal identity consists in a certain sort of psychological continuity (continuity of memory or...
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John Locke - primary and secondary qualities
Štambachová, Lucie ; Palkoska, Jan (referee) ; Hill, James (advisor)
Mé zkoumání se v této práci zaměřuje na Lockovu Esej o lidském rozumu (An Essay concerning Human Understanding) z roku 1689, zvláště pak na Lockovo stanovisko k problematice primárních a sekundárních kvalit. Řekněme si však na úvod alespoň základní informace o samotném Lockovi a jeho životě. Locke se narodil roku 1632 jako syn právníka. Studoval na Christ Church College v Oxfordu, kde roku 1658 získal titul mistra svobodných umění. Locke pracoval jako soukromý učitel, lékař, ale také ve státních službách. Mezi jeho díla, kromě výše zmíněné Eseje, patří například Dvě pojednání o občanské vládě (Two Treatises of Civil Government), Myšlenky o vychování (Thoughts concerning Education), Listy o snášenlivosti (A Letter on Toleration) atd. Ze skladby jeho děl je patrné, že Locke byl velmi všestranný myslitel a kromě otázek epistemologických a ontologických se soustředil rovněž na politickou filosofii a na podmínky výchovy a vzdělání. Locke byl zastáncem a jedním z tvůrců tzv. novověkého empirismu, což byl směr vymezující se vůči racionalismu, jehož zakladatelem byl René Descartes. Obě tyto školy si kladly shodné otázky, ale odpovědi, které na ně dávaly, byly různé. Zásadní rozdíl tkví v tom, že empiristé hledali pravdu ve zkušenosti, racionalisté v rozumu. Z těchto protikladných východisek se odvíjejí odlišné...
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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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Aristotelian doctrine of potencies in the light of recent theory of dispositional predicates
Peroutka, David ; Sousedík, Stanislav (advisor) ; Novák, Lukáš (referee) ; Palkoska, Jan (referee)
The subject of the presented work are potencies or powers, which are called - in contemporary terminology - also dispositions. Ascription of a disposition to some effect can be substituted by a dispositional conditional sentence of the following type: "If x is (were) suitably tested, x manifests (should manifest) ." As the non-modal way to deal with dispositions does not seem feasible, we employ the modality of necessity to formalize the (subjunctive) dispositional conditional. But the needed necessity cannot be explained merely by means of formal logic. Therefore we accede to the ontological considerations concerning powers. Since we use categorical properties (qualities) to explain behaviour of things, dispositions non-identical with their categorical basis would be superfluous. Hence powers (dispositions) are only conceptually distinct from their qualitative basis. We know categorical properties, but we know them only thanks to their causal potentialities or powers. So power belongs to the essence of corresponding quality, it belongs to it as its relation to some (possible) effect. If the powers belong to the essence of qualities, a qualified thing, qua qualified, necessarily has the corresponding power. As the power ascription can be substituted with a conditional sentence, we may formulate the...
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Spinoza's ontology of power
Bartošek, Pavel ; Thein, Karel (advisor) ; Benyovszky, Ladislav (referee) ; Palkoska, Jan (referee)
The subject of this thesis is late Spinoza. It is necessary to consider the period around the year 1665 as a turning point in Spinoza's life (1632-1677). In this period he stops referring to his chef-d'oeuvre as the Philosophy and begins to name it Ethics. He also interrupts his work on the Ethics for five years in 1665 and composes the Theologico- Political Treatise, a democratic manifesto. In his early writings he devalorises the body and considers it as a passive principle. But in the Theologico-Political Treatise he shows that the bodily imagination and affects are the constitutive elements of human society. After 1665, he takes the body, and not the conscience or the cogito, as a model for conceiving what talking and acting means. The notion of a striving (conatus) and his distinction between activity and passivity replaces the traditional metaphysical theory of subject and subjectivity, which, according to Spinoza, succumbs to the psychological illusion of freedom and the theological illusion of finalism. Late Spinoza elaborated a very remarkable ontology of power, according to which power is active productivity. In the first part of the Ethics, Spinoza undertakes a thorough destruction of metaphysics, which leaves no room for any history of being. Causa sui cannot be an external justification of...
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Speaking the mind, minding the language
Vraný, Martin ; Palkoska, Jan (referee) ; Peregrin, Jaroslav (advisor)
The thesis proposes to address the mind-body problem, and specif- ically the question of scienti c explanation of consciousness, in terms of language and meaning. First, the core of the mind- problem is identi ed with Kant's transcendental unity of apper- ception and the distinction between empirical and transcendental consciousness is emphasized. Empirical consciousness, as con- sciousness of something, is assumed to be best approached by a higher-order theory of consciousness. Then various aspects of meaning, intentionality and language in use are discussed to pre- pare ground for the conclusion that transcendental conditions of consciousness are entailed by conditions of being a genuine speaker of language. Thus language can be said to be constitutive consciousness not only in the sense that the behavioural criteria for attributing consciousness are essentially linguistic, but also in the sense that consciousness comes with the ability to speak.
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D. C. Dennett's Approach: on the way to explanation of consciousness
Vraný, Martin ; Peregrin, Jaroslav (advisor) ; Palkoska, Jan (referee)
l'vEnd-Body problem has been a perpetual philosophical issue ever since the dawn of science, and the discussion of Descartes's dualism was the paradigmatic showroom of post:lible solutions for a long time. It wasn't perhaps until the mid-20th century that the debate underwent a considerable conceptual transformation thanks to two impctllses from science: the boom in brainscanning experiments and the boom in computing devices and informatics. The former provided philosophers and scientists with abundance of evidence of correlations between brain activity and mental states. The latter showed how higher mental activities, like pattern recognition Ol' playing chess, could be performed by fast computing machines running a relatively simple programme. Besides these two, there is another important source ať infiuence (only as far as the methodology is concerned) behaviourism. Despite its decline in 1960s marked by renewed interest in the study of mind, theorists were reluctant to rehabilitate the concept of consciousness.
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The human being out of the scope of the Descartes' metaphysical project of Meditations
Hulanová, Magda ; Palkoska, Jan (referee) ; Hill, James (advisor)
Velmi stručně bychom mohli shrnout výsledek dosavadního zkoumání do jediné věty: přijmeme-li Descartovo tvrzení, že metafyzické meditace mají vybudovat základy věd(ění) poznáním prvních principů, pak lze říci, že pojednání o lidské přirozenosti ze Šesté meditace svým diskursem do metafyzického rámce Meditací nepatří, ačkoliv jen díky němu tvoří Meditace jediný a organický celek. Ve své diplomové práci jsme si vytkli za cíl otestovat tvrzení, že pojednáním o lidské přirozenosti ze Šesté meditace překračuje Descartes svůj vlastní záměr, totiž záměr vybudovat jisté a nezpochybnitelné kořeny veškerého vědění. Právě Meditace o první filosofii, jak jsme ukázali ve druhé kapitole, se měly věnovat výhradně metafyzickému zkoumání, které by vedlo k nalezení prvních příčin neboli principů poznání. Meditace měly představovat naplnění Descartova úsilí založit vědu na zcela jistých a nezpochybnitelných základech. Má-li celá fyzikální přírodověda spíše pravděpodobnostní charakter, neboli je-li pravdivá pouze natolik, nakolik umožňuje bezrozporné vysvětlení přírodních jevů, pak to má být podle Descarta metafyzika, jejíž poznatky prvních principů budou mít zcela pravdivý charakter a která bude podkladem fyziky a veškeré vědy vůbec. A opíráme-li se ve fyzice i jiných vědách především o smíšené poznatky smyslového vnímání, v...
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Error in Descartes' philosophy
Klinka, Tomáš ; Hill, James (referee) ; Palkoska, Jan (advisor)
The present work analyses the theory of error of René Descartes, mainly in the context of his Fourth Meditation. This analyze begins with the exposition of the Descartes' theory of judgment and his notions of understanding and volition. The main question is the following: Is Descartes' theory of error valid, even if we consider all the objections of Descartes' critics? The maill objection is: in the explication of error during our judgment as a result of interaction between a limited understanding and an unlimited human will, we have to consider us capable do decide at will what we believe and what we don't, which is not an intuitive position. But this work suggests that this non-intuitive position is sustainable, if we abandon the "strong" version of Descartes' voluntarism, in which the will influences our believes directly, and we see Descartes' theory of error as using the "milder" version of voluntarism (called here "attention" voluntarism), in which the will influence us indirectly, by forcing our attention in the needed way. As a final conclusion, we consider Descartes' theory of error as valid.
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