This paper examines a computational account about higher-level creativity proposed by Margaret A. Boden, a female psychologist and philosopher. She uses an interesting computational concept the “conceptual space” – known as “the box” in our everyday language – to measure levels of creativeness and to explain how higher-level creativity is achieved. In this paper, I mainly seek to look into detail and analyze her answers to the following two questions: “What does Boden mean by the ‘conceptual space?” and “How is it possible to think outside of the ‘conceptual space?” To that end, I have researched papers that commented on Boden’s computational account, and have come up with hypothetical cases to flesh out my arguments and to appeal to the readers’ intuitions. The conclusion of this paper is that the knowledge of yourself being inside particular boxes and the knowledge of what limits and potential a given conceptual space has are neither sufficient nor necessary for producing the kind of rule-breaking “outside-the-box” ideas, but the idea of a “conceptual space” remains useful in evaluating the quality of ideas after their generation. The philosophy of creativity is such an intriguing topic to me – we all value creativity as a society and have put “outside-the-box” type of thinking on the pedestal since the age of Plato. Yet when we think more about the idea of “outside-the-box” thinking, much ambiguity arises. This topic greatly sparks my interest in the philosophy of mind, and through research and self-introspection, I have not only learned more about the concept of creativity, but also discovered more about my own thinking style.

Pei Kong-ngai. / Thesis submitted in: September 2002. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves i-vi). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter Chapter One: --- Introduction / Chapter 1. --- Intentional States and Folk Psychology --- p.1 / Chapter 2. --- "Eliminativism, Externalism, and Individualism" --- p.5 / Chapter 3. --- Overview of The Thesis --- p.8 / Chapter Chapter Two: --- Mental States and Externalism / Chapter 1. --- The Distinction between Intrinsic and Relational Properties --- p.11 / Chapter 2. --- Supervenience --- p.14 / Chapter 3. --- Externalism --- p.18 / Chapter 4. --- The Classical Arguments for Semantic Externalism: The Twin Earth Thought Experiments --- p.19 / Chapter 5. --- From Semantic Externalism to Mental Content Externalism --- p.23 / Chapter 6. --- Externalism and Physicalism --- p.26 / Chapter 7. --- The Common Concept Strategy Objection to Externalism --- p.28 / Chapter Chapter Three: --- Stich's Argument for Individualism: The Argument from Below / Chapter 1. --- Stich's Argument for Individualism --- p.34 / Chapter 2. --- Narrow and Wide Behaviour --- p.37 / Chapter 3. --- Refining the Argument --- p.39 / Chapter 4. --- Is Replacement Argument Successful in establishing Individualism? --- p.44 / Chapter 5. --- Fodor's Argument for Premise 2*: Narrow Behaviour and Crazy Causal Mechanisms --- p.46 / Chapter 6. --- Causal vs. Non-Causal (Constitutive) Causal Powers --- p.51 / Chapter 7. --- Conclusion: Stich's Unsuccessful Argument from Below --- p.53 / Chapter Chapter Four: --- Fodor's Argument for Individualism: The Argument from Abo --- p.ve / Chapter 1. --- Fodor's Explanan Argument --- p.56 / Chapter 2. --- A Response to Individualism: Rendering Intentional States Individualistic --- p.65 / Chapter 2.1 --- Fodor's Account of Narrow Content --- p.69 / Chapter 2.2 --- Criticisms of Fodor's Account of Narrow Content --- p.71 / Chapter 3. --- Examining Global Individualism: Fodor's A Priori Argument --- p.74 / Chapter 3.1 --- Counterexamples to Global Individualism --- p.76 / Chapter 3.2 --- Can Global Individualism be Reconciled with Relational Taxonomies? --- p.81 / Chapter 3.3 --- Two Senses of Causal Relevance of External Conditions --- p.83 / Chapter 3.4 --- The Failure of The Argument from Above --- p.89 / Chapter Chapter Five: --- Conclusion --- p.91 / Bibliography --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.vi

How does the living body impact, and perhaps even help constitute, the thinking, reasoning, feeling agent? This is the guiding question that the following work seeks to answer. The subtitle of this project is emotion, prediction and embodied cognition for good reason: these are the three closely related themes that tie together the various chapters of the following thesis. The central claim is that a better understanding of the nature of emotion offers valuable insight for understanding the nature of the so called 'predictive mind', including a powerful new way to think about the mind as embodied Recently a new perspective has arguably taken the pole position in both philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences when it comes to discussing the nature of mind. This framework takes the brain to be a probabilistic prediction engine. Such engines, so the framework proposes, are dedicated to the task of minimizing the disparity between how they expect the world to be and how the world actually is. Part of the power of the framework is the elegant suggestion that much of what we take to be central to human intelligence - perception, action, emotion, learning and language - can be understood within the framework of prediction and error reduction. In what follows I will refer to this general approach to understanding the mind and brain as 'predictive processing'. While the predictive processing framework is in many ways revolutionary, there is a tendency for researchers interested in this topic to assume a very traditional 'neurocentric' stance concerning the mind. I argue that this neurocentric stance is completely optional, and that a focus on emotional processing provides good reasons to think that the predictive mind is also a deeply embodied mind. The result is a way of understanding the predictive brain that allows the body and the surrounding environment to make a robust constitutive contribution to the predictive process. While it's true that predictive models can get us a long way in making sense of what drives the neural-economy, I will argue that a complete picture of human intelligence requires us to also explore the many ways that a predictive brain is embodied in a living body and embedded in the social-cultural world in which it was born and lives.

The extended mind debate juggles the possibilities of whether or not the mind extends out into the world. Today, with the rise in technology, we have an additional claim that our tools are responsible for extending our minds. The internet, smart phones, and other tools give us a foothold in the extended mind debate by providing real world examples of how our mind is perceived as extending out into the world. In discovering where the divide between mind and environment exists we can come up with a conclusion whether or not the mind truly extends out into the world.

This dissertation defends a certain view of the mind/body relation, according to which although there is a sense in which everything is physical, there is also a sense in which mental phenomena are irreducible to physical phenomena. The reason for this irreducibility, according to the position defended in this work, is that the mental has a certain normative character which the physical lacks. The central thesis defended in the first part of the work is the claim, advanced by Donald Davidson among others, that the mental realm is governed by constitutive principles of rationality. I both attempt to explain what this means precisely and provide arguments as to why we should think that it is true. Having defended the thesis, I then turn to show that it entails that certain mental phenomena are normative. If the normative is generally irreducible to the non-normative -- as I argue there is good reason to hold -- it then follows as a special case that the mental phenomena in question are irreducible to any (non-normative) physical phenomena. Is this form of antireductionism scientifically respectable? In the second part of the dissertation I attempt to establish that it is by showing that the view can be reconciled with a physicalistically acceptable account of mental causation. Focusing on the causal exclusion problem advanced by Jaegwon Kim among others, I critically discuss both reductive and certain nonreductive solutions to the problem that have been advanced by various philosophers. I then propose my own nonreductive solution to the problem, and attempt to draw out some of the consequences of this solution both for physicalism and for the nature of normativity. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed January 11, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-212).

No description available.

The problem of reconciling the subjectively known mind with the objectively known brain has puzzled philosophers and scientists for centuries. When attempting to solve this problem in recent times, the focus has been on explaining how the mind is born from the brain, how the two are related, and how we can best understand them. This problem is of particular relevance to clinical psychology because it attempts to both understand and explain pathological presentations by appealing to both subjective personal experience and objective knowledge of the physicality of the brain. In this respect, clinical psychology straddles the gap between mind and brain. This thesis investigates the implications of the mind/brain problem for theory and practice in clinical psychology. Chapter one identifies the tension between knowing the world subjectively and knowing the world objectively and discusses the importance of understanding this tension when investigating the mind/brain problem. Chapter two sets out the foundational concepts of cognitive behavioural approaches in clinical psychology, looking in particular at how cognitive behavioural approaches conceptualise mental events like thoughts and beliefs. It is concluded that while cognitive behavioural approaches to clinical psychology regularly incorporate both mentalistic and physical concepts in its theory and practice, it does not address the inherent problems in their combined use, as revealed by the mind brain/problem. In order to improve the use of mentalistic concepts within the theory and practice of cognitive behaviourally based clinical psychology, chapter three explores the major conceptualisations of mind from the discipline of philosophy of mind. To achieve this improvement, chapter four, suggests that refining of mentalistic concepts in clinical psychology, through the application of philosophical concepts of mind, can be made possible through the use of a framework that captures the different explanatory levels at which the mind/brain operates. The levels-of-explanation framework is put forward for this purpose. Of particular relevance to clinical psychology is the ability to retain the importance of autonomous, subjectively experienced, and causally efficacious mental events, while at the same time, being able to give a realistic account of how these mental events are linked to the physical brain. The levels-of-explanation framework is judged to be a suitable approach with which to achieve this. In chapters five and six, the implications of clinical psychology's use of mentalistic concepts are explored in relation to evidence-based practice and case formulation. It is shown that through a greater understanding of both the nature of mind and the relationship between the mind and the brain, improvements can be made to both the theory and practice of cognitive behaviourally base clinical practice. This is achieved through the application of philosophical concepts of mind, via a levels-of-explanation framework, while both researching and undertaking clinical practice in clinical psychology.

No description available.

No description available.