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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Mental activity in Descartes' causal-semantic model of sensory perception

Ortín Nadal, Anna Pilar January 2018 (has links)
The aim of this thesis is to defend a reading of Descartes' theory of sensory perception in which, against a widespread interpretation, the mind is not a passive receiver of inputs from the environment, but an active decoder of neural information that contributes to the representational content of ideas. I call this the 'mental activity thesis' and, in the overall picture, I identify it as one of the philosophical implications of the seventeenth-century scientific revolution. Within Descartes' dualism, to offer a theory of sensory perception amounts to describing the interplay between the natural world, the brain, and the mind. Given his mechanistic, micro-corpuscular conception of matter, Descartes developed detailed physiological descriptions of the interaction between external objects and the brain. He envisaged it as an isomorphic relation in which the characteristics of objects are transmitted through the nerves to the brain as patterns of geometrically reduced properties. This process is often read as culminating with the mind being passively affected by a corporeal isomorph. Descartes' doctrine becomes elusive in its mental phase, but the passivity reading, so I contend, remains inadequate. I argue for the mental activity thesis through four claims. First, I subscribe the known view that Descartes is concerned about a version of the mind-body problem that is not equivalent to the problem of substance interaction. It is rather a problem of dissimilarity between mental representations and mechanistic explanations. The question is how the qualitative character of sensory experiences can arise from the quantitative notions of physical science. As a way of emphasising the weight that the problem of dissimilarity has for Descartes' philosophical decisions, I show that it motivates a metaphysically interesting distinction between types of causes for the case of brain-mind interaction. Second, I defend the position that, despite not holding a perfectly unambiguous doctrine, Descartes' introduction of natural signs is the closest that he got to formulating a full-fledged theory of sensory perception. The appeal to natural signs has been normally deemed as metaphorical in the literature. I argue that, on the contrary, it is possible to reconstruct a causal story for brain-mind interaction along the lines of a semantic model based on Descartes' identification of neural events with natural signs. A causal-semantic model emerges as a charitable, plausible reading that reveals the mind as an active interpreter. Third, in light of the mental activity thesis, I read Descartes' late appeal to the innateness of all ideas (notably in the Comments on a Certain Broadsheet) as a strategy to account for a type of representational content needed for sensory ideas that, while produced by the mind, is different from that of his paradigmatic innate ideas. I assist Descartes in exploring how the category of innateness captures mental activity within a causal-semantic theory. Fourth, in the course of this argumentation, and for further support, I address the role of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities in Descartes' theory. I tackle a pervasive objection stemming from his alleged association of the perception of primary qualities with the intellect. By reassessing Descartes' views on mental activity, this interpretation aims at a lucid description of sensory perception that goes beyond the rigid rationalism that is often credited to him.
2

Technik und Bildung in der verwissenschaftlichten Lebenswelt

Lumila, Minna 02 June 2023 (has links)
Die Studie versucht, Husserls Modell einer nicht-wissenschaftlichen Lebenswelt für pädagogische Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Technik und Bildung in der verwissenschaftlichen Welt zu öffnen. Sie diskutiert Entwicklungsprobleme der Spätmoderne unter pluralen Fragestellungen und führt Ansätze und Traditionen zusammen, die unterschiedliche Wege zur Weiterentwicklung der modernen Bildungstheorie beschritten haben. Im Zentrum steht die Frage, wie moderne Technik einerseits als lebensweltliche Entfremdung des Menschen problematisiert und andererseits als Produkt menschlicher Freiheit und Weltgestaltung gewürdigt werden kann. In vier Kapiteln werden die methodischen Ansätze und Antworten vorgestellt, die der Philosoph und Pädagoge Eugen Fink (1905–1975), der Philosoph Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), der Philosoph und Erziehungswissenschaftler Theodor Litt (1880–1962) und der Soziologe Helmut Schelsky (1912–1984) auf die Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Bildung und Technik gegeben haben. Im Durchgang durch ihre Positionen wird ein Konzert erarbeitet, dessen Originalität darin liegt, Abstimmungsprobleme von Bildung, Technik und Lebenswelt aus postdualistischer, praxistheoretischer sowie posthumanistischer Perspektive zu thematisieren. / The study attempts to open Husserl's model of a non-scientific lifeworld for pedagogical investigations of the relationship between technology and “Bildung” in the scientific world. It discusses developmental problems of late modernity under plural questions and brings together approaches and traditions that have taken different paths to the further development of modern “Bildungs”-theory. The central question is how modern technology can be problematized on the one hand as the alienation of human beings from the world of life and on the other hand be appreciated as a product of human freedom and the shaping of the world. Four chapters present the methodological approaches and answers that philosopher and educator Eugen Fink (1905–1975), philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), philosopher and educationalist Theodor Litt (1880–1962), and sociologist Helmut Schelsky (1912–1984) have given to the question of the relationship between education and technology. In the course of their positions, a concert will be developed whose originality lies in addressing the coordination problems of “Bildung” (education), “Technik” (technology) and “Lebenswelt” (lifeworld) from a post-dualist, praxis-theoretical as well as post-humanist perspective.

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