Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information , with the aim of seeking the truth . It is associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy , religion , science , language , mathematics , and art , and is normally considered to be a distinguishing ability possessed by humans . Reason is sometimes referred to as rationality .
152-399: A person ( pl. : people or persons , depending on context) is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason , morality , consciousness or self-consciousness , and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship , ownership of property , or legal responsibility . The defining features of personhood and, consequently, what makes
304-455: A formal proof , arguably the most difficult of formal reasoning tasks. Reasoning, like habit or intuition , is one of the ways by which thinking moves from one idea to a related idea. For example, reasoning is the means by which rational individuals understand the significance of sensory information from their environments, or conceptualize abstract dichotomies such as cause and effect , truth and falsehood , or good and evil . Reasoning, as
456-405: A midlife crisis involving an inner conflict about personal identity , often associated with anxiety, a sense of lack of accomplishments in life, and an awareness of mortality. Intellectual faculties tend to decline in later adulthood, specifically the ability to learn complex unfamiliar tasks and later also the ability to remember, while people tend to become more inward-looking and cautious. It
608-474: A nerve net , like jellyfish , and organisms with bilaterally symmetric bodies , whose nervous systems tend to be more centralized. About 540 million years ago, vertebrates evolved within the group of bilaterally organized organisms. All vertebrates, like birds and mammals , have a central nervous system including a complex brain with specialized functions while invertebrates, like clams and insects , either have no brains or tend to have simple brains. With
760-448: A bicycle or playing a musical instrument. Another distinction is between short-term memory , which holds information for brief periods, usually with the purpose of completing specific cognitive tasks, and long-term memory , which can store information indefinitely. Thinking involves the processing of information and the manipulation of concepts and ideas . It is a goal-oriented activity that often happens in response to experiences as
912-462: A bodily change causes mental discomfort or when a limb moves because of an intention . According to substance dualism , minds or souls exist as distinct substances that have mental states while material things are another type of substance. This view implies that, at least in principle, minds can exist without bodies. Property dualism is another view, saying that mind and matter are not distinct individuals but different properties that apply to
1064-640: A broader version of "addition and subtraction" which is not limited to numbers. This understanding of reason is sometimes termed "calculative" reason. Similar to Descartes, Hobbes asserted that "No discourse whatsoever, can end in absolute knowledge of fact, past, or to come" but that "sense and memory" is absolute knowledge. In the late 17th century through the 18th century, John Locke and David Hume developed Descartes's line of thought still further. Hume took it in an especially skeptical direction, proposing that there could be no possibility of deducing relationships of cause and effect, and therefore no knowledge
1216-475: A calculator extend the mind's capacity to store and process information. The closely related view of enactivism holds that mental processes involve an interaction between organism and environment. The mind–body problem is the difficulty of providing a general explanation of the relationship between mind and body, for example, of the link between thoughts and brain processes. Despite their different characteristics, mind and body interact with each other, like when
1368-464: A complex neural network and cognitive processes emerge from their electrical and chemical interactions. The human brain is divided into regions that are associated with different functions. The main regions are the hindbrain , midbrain , and forebrain . The hindbrain and the midbrain are responsible for many biological functions associated with basic survival while higher mental functions, ranging from thoughts to motivation, are primarily localized in
1520-414: A complex physical environment through processes like behavioral flexibility, learning, and tool use. Other suggested mechanisms include the effects of a changed diet with energy-rich food and general benefits from an increased speed and efficiency of information processing. Besides the development of mind in general in the course of history, there is also the development of individual human minds . Some of
1672-406: A content that can be expressed by a declarative sentence . When a person believes that it is raining, they have the propositional attitude of belief towards the content "it is raining". Different types of propositional states are characterized by different attitudes towards their content. For instance, it is also possible to hope, fear, desire, or doubt that it is raining. A mental state or process
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#17327652394381824-400: A different form of malfunctioning. Anxiety disorders involve intense and persistent fear that is disproportionate to the actual threat and significantly impairs everyday life, like social phobias , which involve irrational fear of certain social situations. Anxiety disorders also include obsessive–compulsive disorder , for which the anxiety manifests in the form of intrusive thoughts that
1976-471: A foundation of all possible knowledge, Descartes decided to throw into doubt all knowledge— except that of the mind itself in the process of thinking: At this time I admit nothing that is not necessarily true. I am therefore precisely nothing but a thinking thing; that is a mind, or intellect, or understanding, or reason—words of whose meanings I was previously ignorant. This eventually became known as epistemological or "subject-centred" reason, because it
2128-551: A free society each individual must be able to pursue their goals however they see fit, as long as their actions conform to principles given by reason. He formulated such a principle, called the " categorical imperative ", which would justify an action only if it could be universalized: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. In contrast to Hume, Kant insisted that reason itself (German Vernunft ) could be used to find solutions to metaphysical problems, especially
2280-607: A genetic predisposition to language itself include Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker . If reason is symbolic thinking, and peculiarly human, then this implies that humans have a special ability to maintain a clear consciousness of the distinctness of "icons" or images and the real things they represent. Merlin Donald writes: Mind The mind is that which thinks , feels , perceives , imagines , remembers , and wills . The totality of mental phenomena, it includes both conscious processes, through which an individual
2432-482: A great variety of methods to study the mind. Experimental approaches set up a controlled situation, either in the laboratory or the field, in which they modify independent variables and measure their effects on dependent variables . This approach makes it possible to identify causal relations between the variables. For example, to determine whether people with similar interests (independent variable) are more likely to become friends (dependent variables), participants of
2584-672: A long evolutionary history starting with the development of the nervous system and the brain . While it is generally accepted today that mind is not exclusive to humans and various non-human animals have some form of mind, there is no consensus at which point exactly the mind emerged. The evolution of mind is usually explained in terms of natural selection : genetic variations responsible for new or improved mental capacities, like better perception or social dispositions, have an increased chance of being passed on to future generations if they are beneficial to survival and reproduction . Minimal forms of information processing are already found in
2736-658: A means to an end (on the basis of perceived 'need'). Primus' approach can thus be contrasted to Kant's moral-philosophical definition of a person: whereas Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative states that rational beings must never be treated merely as a means to an end and that they must also always be treated as an end, Primus offers that the aspects that humans (and some animals) desire, and only those aspects, are ends, by definition. Reason Reasoning involves using more-or-less rational processes of thinking and cognition to extrapolate from one's existing knowledge to generate new knowledge, and involves
2888-425: A model of communicative reason that sees it as an essentially cooperative activity, based on the fact of linguistic intersubjectivity . Nikolas Kompridis proposed a widely encompassing view of reason as "that ensemble of practices that contributes to the opening and preserving of openness" in human affairs, and a focus on reason's possibilities for social change. The philosopher Charles Taylor , influenced by
3040-492: A moral decision, "morality is, at the very least, the effort to guide one's conduct by reason —that is, doing what there are the best reasons for doing—while giving equal [and impartial] weight to the interests of all those affected by what one does." The proposal that reason gives humanity a special position in nature has been argued to be a defining characteristic of western philosophy and later western science , starting with classical Greece. Philosophy can be described as
3192-435: A more abstract level that cannot be achieved by physics. According to functionalism , mental concepts do not describe the internal constitution of physical substances but functional roles within a system. One consequence of this view is that mind does not depend on brains but can also be realized by other systems that implement the corresponding functional roles, possibly also computers. The hard problem of consciousness
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#17327652394383344-414: A natural order that was itself understood to have aims. Perhaps starting with Pythagoras or Heraclitus , the cosmos was even said to have reason. Reason, by this account, is not just a characteristic that people happen to have. Reason was considered of higher stature than other characteristics of human nature, because it is something people share with nature itself, linking an apparently immortal part of
3496-568: A nominal, though habitual, connection to either (for example) smoke or fire. One example of such a system of symbols and signs is language . The connection of reason to symbolic thinking has been expressed in different ways by philosophers. Thomas Hobbes described the creation of "Markes, or Notes of remembrance" as speech . He used the word speech as an English version of the Greek word logos so that speech did not need to be communicated. When communicated, such speech becomes language, and
3648-451: A part of executive decision making , is also closely identified with the ability to self-consciously change, in terms of goals , beliefs , attitudes , traditions , and institutions , and therefore with the capacity for freedom and self-determination . Psychologists and cognitive scientists have attempted to study and explain how people reason , e.g. which cognitive and neural processes are engaged, and how cultural factors affect
3800-578: A person actively remembers the fact that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris then this state is mental because it is part of consciousness; when the person does not think about it, this belief is still a mental state because the person could bring it to consciousness by thinking about it. This view denies the existence of a "deep unconsciousness", that is, unconscious mental states that cannot in principle become conscious. Another theory says that intentionality
3952-481: A person count as a person, differ widely among cultures and contexts. In addition to the question of personhood, of what makes a being count as a person to begin with, there are further questions about personal identity and self : both about what makes any particular person that particular person instead of another, and about what makes a person at one time the same person as they were or will be at another time despite any intervening changes. The plural form "people"
4104-401: A problem, developing a plan to address it, implementing the plan, and assessing whether it worked. Thinking in the form of decision-making involves considering possible courses of action to assess which one is the most beneficial. As a symbolic process, thinking is deeply intertwined with language and some theorists hold that all thought happens through the medium of language . Imagination
4256-487: A reaction to particular external stimuli. This view implies that mental phenomena are not private internal states but are accessible to empirical observation like regular physical phenomena. Functionalism agrees that mental states do not depend on the exact internal constitution of the mind and characterizes them instead in regard to their functional role. Unlike behaviorism, this role is not limited to behavioral patterns but includes other factors as well. For example, part of
4408-429: A representation of the world and the objects within it. This complex process underlying perceptual experience is shaped by many factors, including the individual's past experiences , cultural background, beliefs, knowledge, and expectations. Memory is the mechanism of storing and retrieving information. Episodic memory handles information about specific past events in one's life and makes this information available in
4560-472: A singular purpose in any moment, existing and operating with relative harmony. Primus defines people exclusively as their desires, whereby desires are states which are sought for arbitrary or nil purpose(s). Primus views that desires, by definition, are each sought as ends in and of themselves and are logically the most precious (valuable) states that one can conceive. Primus distinguishes states of desire (or 'want') from states which are sought instrumentally, as
4712-592: A subjective experience of the world and are capable of suffering and feeling joy. Some of the difficulties of assessing animal minds are also reflected in the topic of artificial minds, that is, the question of whether computer systems implementing artificial intelligence should be considered a form of mind. This idea is consistent with some theories of the nature of mind, such as functionalism and its idea that mental concepts describe functional roles, which are implemented by biological brains but could in principle also be implemented by artificial devices. The Turing test
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4864-471: A symbolic process aimed at making sense of them, organizing their information, and deciding how to respond. Logical reasoning is a form of thinking that starts from a set of premises and aims to arrive at a conclusion supported by these premises. This is the case when deducing that "Socrates is mortal" from the premises "Socrates is a man" and "all men are mortal". Problem-solving is a closely related process that consists of several steps, such as identifying
5016-465: A synonym for "reasoning". In contrast to the use of "reason" as an abstract noun , a reason is a consideration that either explains or justifies events, phenomena, or behavior . Reasons justify decisions, reasons support explanations of natural phenomena, and reasons can be given to explain the actions (conduct) of individuals. The words are connected in this way: using reason, or reasoning, means providing good reasons. For example, when evaluating
5168-451: A system of logic. Psychologist David Moshman, citing Bickhard and Campbell, argues for a " metacognitive conception of rationality" in which a person's development of reason "involves increasing consciousness and control of logical and other inferences". Reason is a type of thought , and logic involves the attempt to describe a system of formal rules or norms of appropriate reasoning. The oldest surviving writing to explicitly consider
5320-585: A therapist to change patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. Psychoanalysis aims to help patients resolve conflicts between the conscious and the unconscious mind. Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on conscious mental phenomena to identify and change irrational beliefs and negative thought patterns. Behavior therapy , a related approach, relies on classical conditioning to unlearn harmful behaviors. Humanistic therapies try to help people gain insight into their self-worth and empower them to resolve their problems. Drug therapies use medication to alter
5472-696: A topic of international debate, and has been questioned during the abolition of slavery and the fight for women's rights , in debates about abortion , fetal rights , and in animal rights advocacy. Various debates have focused on questions about the personhood of different classes of entities. Historically, the personhood of women, and slaves has been a catalyst of social upheaval. In most societies today, postnatal humans are defined as persons. Likewise, certain legal entities such as corporations , sovereign states and other polities , or estates in probate are legally defined as persons. However, some people believe that other groups should be included; depending on
5624-583: A visit to the dentist. Another feature commonly ascribed to mental states is that they are private, meaning that others do not have this kind of direct access to a person's mental state and have to infer it from other observations, like the pain behavior of the person with the toothache. Some philosophers claim that knowledge of some or all mental states is infallible , for instance, that a person cannot be mistaken about whether they are in pain. A related view states that all mental states are either conscious or accessible to consciousness. According to this view, when
5776-412: A way of life based upon reason, while reason has been among the major subjects of philosophical discussion since ancient times. Reason is often said to be reflexive , or "self-correcting", and the critique of reason has been a persistent theme in philosophy. For many classical philosophers , nature was understood teleologically , meaning that every type of thing had a definitive purpose that fit within
5928-418: A way that can be explained, for example as cause and effect. In the explanation of Locke , for example, reason requires the mental use of a third idea in order to make this comparison by use of syllogism . More generally, according to Charles Sanders Peirce , reason in the strict sense requires the ability to create and manipulate a system of symbols , as well as indices and icons , the symbols having only
6080-490: A way that is consistent with monotheism and the immortality and divinity of the human soul. For example, in the neoplatonist account of Plotinus , the cosmos has one soul, which is the seat of all reason, and the souls of all people are part of this soul. Reason is for Plotinus both the provider of form to material things, and the light which brings people's souls back into line with their source. The classical view of reason, like many important Neoplatonic and Stoic ideas,
6232-414: A whole. Others, including Hegel, believe that it has obscured the importance of intersubjectivity , or "spirit" in human life, and they attempt to reconstruct a model of what reason should be. Some thinkers, e.g. Foucault, believe there are other forms of reason, neglected but essential to modern life, and to our understanding of what it means to live a life according to reason. Others suggest that there
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6384-471: A wide variety of states, such as perception, thinking, fantasizing, dreaming, and altered states of consciousness . In the case of phenomenal consciousness, the awareness involves a direct and qualitative experience of mental phenomena, like the auditory experience of attending a concert. Access consciousness, by contrast, refers to an awareness of information that is accessible to other mental processes but not necessarily part of current experience. For example,
6536-408: Is physicalism , also referred to as materialism , which states that everything is physical. According to eliminative physicalism , there are no mental phenomena, meaning that things like beliefs and desires do not form part of reality. Reductive physicalists defend a less radical position: they say that mental states exist but can, at least in principle, be completely described by physics without
6688-533: Is rational if it is based on good reasons or follows the norms of rationality. For example, a belief is rational if it relies on strong supporting evidence and a decision is rational if it follows careful deliberation of all the relevant factors and outcomes. Mental states are irrational if they are not based on good reasons, such as beliefs caused by faulty reasoning, superstition , or cognitive biases , and decisions that give into temptations instead of following one's best judgment. Mental states that fall outside
6840-462: Is a central aspect of the mind–body problem: it is the challenge of explaining how physical states can give rise to conscious experience. Its main difficulty lies in the subjective and qualitative nature of consciousness, which is unlike typical physical processes. The hard problem of consciousness contrasts with the "easy problems" of explaining how certain aspects of consciousness function, such as perception, memory, or learning. Another approach to
6992-450: Is a creative process of internally generating mental images. Unlike perception, it does not directly depend on the stimulation of sensory organs. Similar to dreaming , these images are often derived from previous experiences but can include novel combinations and elements. Imagination happens during daydreaming and plays a key role in art and literature but can also be used to come up with novel solutions to real-world problems. Motivation
7144-453: Is a dispositional belief. By activating the belief to consciously think about it or use it in other cognitive processes, it becomes occurrent until it is no longer actively considered or used. The great majority of a person's beliefs are dispositional most of the time. Traditionally, the mind was subdivided into mental faculties understood as capacities to perform certain functions or bring about certain processes. An influential subdivision in
7296-513: Is a traditionally influential procedure to test artificial intelligence: a person exchanges messages with two parties, one of them a human and the other a computer. The computer passes the test if it is not possible to reliably tell which party is the human and which one is the computer. While there are computer programs today that may pass the Turing test, this alone is usually not accepted as conclusive proof of mindedness. For some aspects of mind, it
7448-497: Is acquired and information processed. The intellect is one mental capacity responsible for thought, reasoning, and understanding and is closely related to intelligence as the ability to acquire, understand, and apply knowledge. The brain is the physical organ responsible for most or all mental functions. The modern English word mind originates from the Old English word gemynd , meaning "memory". This term gave rise to
7600-427: Is an aspect of other mental processes in which mental resources like awareness are directed towards certain features of experience and away from others. This happens when a driver focuses on the traffic while ignoring billboards on the side of the road. Attention can be controlled voluntarily in the pursuit of specific goals but can also occur involuntarily when a strong stimulus captures a person's attention. Attention
7752-584: Is an internal state that propels individuals to initiate, continue, or terminate goal-directed behavior. It is responsible for the formation of intentions to perform actions and affects what goals someone pursues, how much effort they invest in the activity, and how long they engage in it. Motivation is affected by emotions, which are temporary experiences of positive or negative feelings like joy or anger. They are directed at and evaluate specific events, persons, or situations. They usually come together with certain physiological and behavioral responses. Attention
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#17327652394387904-412: Is aware of external and internal circumstances, and unconscious processes, which can influence an individual without intention or awareness. Traditionally, minds were often conceived as separate entities that can exist on their own but are more commonly understood as capacities of material brains in the contemporary discourse. The mind plays a central role in most aspects of human life but its exact nature
8056-434: Is based on reasoning alone, even if it seems otherwise. Hume famously remarked that, "We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." Hume also took his definition of reason to unorthodox extremes by arguing, unlike his predecessors, that human reason
8208-488: Is based on the knowing subject , who perceives the rest of the world and itself as a set of objects to be studied, and successfully mastered, by applying the knowledge accumulated through such study. Breaking with tradition and with many thinkers after him, Descartes explicitly did not divide the incorporeal soul into parts, such as reason and intellect, describing them instead as one indivisible incorporeal entity. A contemporary of Descartes, Thomas Hobbes described reason as
8360-421: Is commonly acknowledged today that animals have some form of mind, but it is controversial to which animals this applies and how their mind differs from the human mind. Different conceptions of the mind lead to different responses to this problem; when understood in a very wide sense as the capacity to process information, the mind is present in all forms of life, including insects, plants, and individual cells; on
8512-528: Is controversial whether computers can, in principle, implement them, such as desires, feelings, consciousness, and free will. This problem is often discussed through the contrast between weak and strong artificial intelligence. Weak or narrow artificial intelligence is limited to specific mental capacities or functions. It focuses on a particular task or a narrow set of tasks, like autonomous driving , speech recognition , or theorem proving . The goal of strong AI, also termed artificial general intelligence ,
8664-519: Is difficult to directly examine, manipulate, and measure it. Trying to circumvent this problem by investigating the brain comes with new challenges of its own, mainly because of the brain's complexity as a neural network consisting of billions of neurons, each with up to 10,000 links to other neurons. Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. It investigates conscious and unconscious mental phenomena, including perception, memory, feeling, thought, decision, intelligence , and personality . It
8816-420: Is disputed. Some characterizations focus on internal aspects, saying that the mind is private and transforms information. Others stress its relation to outward conduct, understanding mental phenomena as dispositions to engage in observable behavior. The mind–body problem is the challenge of explaining the relation between matter and mind. The dominant position today is physicalism , which says that everything
8968-427: Is further interested in their outward manifestation in the form of observable behavioral patterns and how these patterns depend on external circumstances and are shaped by learning. Psychology is a wide discipline that includes many subfields. Cognitive psychology is interested in higher-order mental activities like thinking, problem-solving, reasoning, and concept formation. Biological psychology seeks to understand
9120-476: Is material, meaning that minds are certain aspects or features of some material objects. The evolutionary history of the mind is tied to the development of the nervous system , which led to the formation of brains. As brains became more complex, the number and capacity of mental functions increased with particular brain areas dedicated to specific mental functions. Individual human minds also develop as they learn from experience and pass through psychological stages in
9272-468: Is not just one reason or rationality, but multiple possible systems of reason or rationality which may conflict (in which case there is no super-rational system one can appeal to in order to resolve the conflict). In the last several decades, a number of proposals have been made to "re-orient" this critique of reason, or to recognize the "other voices" or "new departments" of reason: For example, in opposition to subject-centred reason, Habermas has proposed
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#17327652394389424-511: Is not only found in humans. Aristotle asserted that phantasia (imagination: that which can hold images or phantasmata ) and phronein (a type of thinking that can judge and understand in some sense) also exist in some animals. According to him, both are related to the primary perceptive ability of animals, which gathers the perceptions of different senses and defines the order of the things that are perceived without distinguishing universals, and without deliberation or logos . But this
9576-451: Is not qualitatively different from either simply conceiving individual ideas, or from judgments associating two ideas, and that "reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and endows them with particular qualities, according to their particular situations and relations." It followed from this that animals have reason, only much less complex than human reason. In
9728-420: Is not yet reason, because human imagination is different. Terrence Deacon and Merlin Donald , writing about the origin of language , connect reason not only to language , but also mimesis . They describe the ability to create language as part of an internal modeling of reality , and specific to humankind. Other results are consciousness , and imagination or fantasy . In contrast, modern proponents of
9880-416: Is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group (as in "a people"), and this was the original meaning of the word; it subsequently acquired its use as a plural form of person. The plural form "persons" is often used in philosophical and legal writing. The criteria for being a person... are designed to capture those attributes which are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves and
10032-409: Is relevant to learning, which is the ability of the mind to acquire new information and permanently modify its understanding and behavioral patterns. Individuals learn by undergoing experiences, which helps them adapt to the environment. An influential distinction is between conscious and unconscious mental processes. Consciousness is the awareness of external and internal circumstances. It encompasses
10184-548: Is seen as the most pure or the defining form of reason: "Logic is about reasoning—about going from premises to a conclusion. ... When you do logic, you try to clarify reasoning and separate good from bad reasoning." In modern economics , rational choice is assumed to equate to logically consistent choice. However, reason and logic can be thought of as distinct—although logic is one important aspect of reason. Author Douglas Hofstadter , in Gödel, Escher, Bach , characterizes
10336-412: Is the mark of the mental. A state is intentional if it refers to or represents something. For example, if a person perceives a piano or thinks about it then the mental state is intentional because it refers to a piano. This view distinguishes between original and derivative intentionality. Mental states have original intentionality while some non-mental phenomena have derivative intentionality. For instance,
10488-440: Is the process of interpreting and organizing sensory information to become acquainted with the environment. This information is acquired through sense organs receptive to various types of physical stimuli , which correspond to different forms of perception, such as vision , hearing , touch , smell , and taste . The sensory information received this way is a form of raw data that is filtered and processed to actively construct
10640-470: Is the totality of psychological phenomena and capacities, encompassing consciousness , thought , perception , feeling , mood , motivation , behavior , memory , and learning . The term is sometimes used in a more narrow sense to refer only to higher or more abstract cognitive functions associated with reasoning and awareness . Minds were traditionally conceived as immaterial substances or independent entities and contrasted with matter and body . In
10792-411: Is the way humans posit universal laws of nature . Under practical reason, the moral autonomy or freedom of people depends on their ability, by the proper exercise of that reason, to behave according to laws that are given to them. This contrasted with earlier forms of morality, which depended on religious understanding and interpretation, or on nature , for their substance. According to Kant, in
10944-528: Is to create a complete artificial person that has all the mental capacities of humans, including consciousness, emotion, and reason. It is controversial whether strong AI is possible; influential arguments against it include John Searle 's Chinese Room Argument and Hubert Dreyfus 's critique based on Heideggerian philosophy. Mental health is a state of mind characterized by internal equilibrium and well-being in which mental capacities function as they should. Some theorists emphasize positive features such as
11096-867: The Middle English words mind(e) , münd(e) , and mend(e) , resulting in a slow expansion of meaning to cover all mental capacities. The original meaning is preserved in expressions like call to mind and keep in mind . Cognates include the Old High German gimunt , the Gothic gamunds , the ancient Greek μένος , the Latin mens , and the Sanskrit manas . The mind encompasses many phenomena, including perception , memory , thought , imagination , motivation , emotion , attention , learning , and consciousness . Perception
11248-472: The history of philosophy was between the faculties of intellect and will . The intellect encompasses mental phenomena aimed at understanding the world and determining what to believe or what is true; the will is concerned with practical matters and what is good, reflected in phenomena like desire, decision-making, and action. The exact number and nature of the mental faculties are disputed and more fine-grained subdivisions have been proposed, such as dividing
11400-427: The visual and the auditory areas . A central function of the hippocampus is the formation and retrieval of long-term memories. It belongs to the limbic system , which plays a key role in the regulation of emotions through the amygdala . The motor cortex is responsible for planning, executing, and controlling voluntary movements. Broca's area is a separate region dedicated to speech production . The activity of
11552-457: The "mark of the mental", that is, the criteria that distinguish mental from non-mental phenomena. Epistemic criteria say that the unique feature of mental states is how people know about them. For example, if a person has a toothache, they have direct or non-inferential knowledge that they are in pain. But they do not have this kind of knowledge of the physical causes of the pain and may have to consult external evidence through visual inspection or
11704-488: The 18th century, Immanuel Kant attempted to show that Hume was wrong by demonstrating that a " transcendental " self, or "I", was a necessary condition of all experience. Therefore, suggested Kant, on the basis of such a self, it is in fact possible to reason both about the conditions and limits of human knowledge. And so long as these limits are respected, reason can be the vehicle of morality, justice, aesthetics, theories of knowledge ( epistemology ), and understanding. In
11856-559: The 20th century German philosopher Martin Heidegger , proposed that reason ought to include the faculty of disclosure , which is tied to the way we make sense of things in everyday life, as a new "department" of reason. In the essay "What is Enlightenment?", Michel Foucault proposed a critique based on Kant's distinction between "private" and "public" uses of reason: The terms logic or logical are sometimes used as if they were identical with reason or rational , or sometimes logic
12008-643: The Neoplatonic view of human reason and its implications for our relationship to creation, to ourselves, and to God. The Neoplatonic conception of the rational aspect of the human soul was widely adopted by medieval Islamic philosophers and continues to hold significance in Iranian philosophy . As European intellectual life reemerged from the Dark Ages , the Christian Patristic tradition and
12160-419: The abilities of a person to realize their potential, express and modulate emotions, cope with adverse life situations, and fulfill their social role. Negative definitions, by contrast, see mental health as the absence of mental illness in the form of mental disorders . Mental disorders are abnormal patterns of thought, emotion, or behavior that deviate not only from how a mental capacity works on average but from
12312-429: The brain chemistry involved in the disorder through substances like antidepressants , antipsychotics , mood stabilizers , and anxiolytics . Various fields of inquiry study the mind, including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and cognitive science. They differ from each other in the aspects of mind they investigate and the methods they employ in the process. The study of the mind poses various problems since it
12464-436: The cognitive level, maladaptive beliefs and patterns of thought can be responsible. Environmental factors involve cultural influences and social events that may trigger the onset of a disorder. There are various approaches to treating mental disorders, and the most suitable treatment usually depends on the type of disorder, its cause, and the individual's overall condition. Psychotherapeutic methods use personal interaction with
12616-484: The concept of mental modules is normally used to provide a more limited explanation restricted to certain low-level cognitive processes without trying to explain how they are integrated into higher-level processes such as conscious reasoning. Many low-level cognitive processes responsible for visual perception have this automatic and unconscious nature. In the case of visual illusions like the Müller-Lyer illusion ,
12768-483: The consumption of psychoactive drugs , like caffeine, antidepressants , alcohol, and psychedelics , temporarily affects brain chemistry with diverse effects on the mind, ranging from increased attention to mood changes, impaired cognitive functions, and hallucinations . Long-term changes to the brain in the form of neurodegenerative diseases and brain injuries can lead to permanent alterations in mental functions. Alzheimer's disease in its first stage deteriorates
12920-438: The contemporary discourse, they are more commonly seen as features of other entities and are often understood as capacities of material brains. The precise definition of mind is disputed and while it is generally accepted that some non-human animals also have mind, there is no agreement on where exactly the boundary lies. Despite these disputes, there is wide agreement that mind plays a central role in most aspects of human life as
13072-481: The debates could be held on common basis to all theological schools. The purpose of the debate was to establish the relation, similarities and differences between the logos ( Ancient Greek : Λóγος , romanized : Lógos / Verbum ) and God. The philosophical concept of person arose, taking the word " prosopon " ( Ancient Greek : πρόσωπον , romanized : prósōpon ) from the Greek theatre . Therefore,
13224-431: The development of mind before birth, such as nutrition, maternal stress, and exposure to harmful substances like alcohol during pregnancy. Early childhood is marked by rapid developments as infants learn voluntary control over their bodies and interact with their environment on a basic level. Typically after about one year, this covers abilities like walking, recognizing familiar faces, and producing individual words. On
13376-419: The different areas is additionally influenced by neurotransmitters , which are signaling molecules that enhance or inhibit different types of neural communication. For example, dopamine influences motivation and pleasure while serotonin affects mood and appetite. The close interrelation of brain processes and the mind is seen by the effect that physical changes of the brain have on the mind. For instance,
13528-448: The discovery of the foundations of morality. Kant claimed that these solutions could be found with his " transcendental logic ", which unlike normal logic is not just an instrument that can be used indifferently, as it was for Aristotle, but a theoretical science in its own right and the basis of all the others. According to Jürgen Habermas , the "substantive unity" of reason has dissolved in modern times, such that it can no longer answer
13680-623: The distinction in this way: Logic is done inside a system while reason is done outside the system by such methods as skipping steps, working backward, drawing diagrams, looking at examples, or seeing what happens if you change the rules of the system. Psychologists Mark H. Bickard and Robert L. Campbell argue that "rationality cannot be simply assimilated to logicality"; they note that "human knowledge of logic and logical systems has developed" over time through reasoning, and logical systems "can't construct new logical systems more powerful than themselves", so reasoning and rationality must involve more than
13832-460: The domain of rational evaluation are arational rather than irrational. There is controversy regarding which mental phenomena lie outside this domain; suggested examples include sensory impressions, feelings, desires, and involuntary responses. Another contrast is between dispositional and occurrent mental states. A dispositional state is a power that is not exercised. If a person believes that cats have whiskers but does not think about this fact, it
13984-489: The earliest forms of life 4 to 3.5 billion years ago, like the abilities of bacteria and eukaryotic unicellular organisms to sense the environment, store this information, and react to it. Nerve cells emerged with the development of multicellular organisms more than 600 million years ago as a way to process and transmit information. About 600 to 550 million years ago, an evolutionary bifurcation happened into radially symmetric organisms with ring-shaped nervous systems or
14136-445: The emotional and social levels, they develop attachments with their primary caretakers and express emotions ranging from joy to anger, fear, and surprise. An influential theory by Jean Piaget divides the cognitive development of children into four stages. The sensorimotor stage from birth until two years is concerned with sensory impressions and motor activities while learning that objects remain in existence even when not observed. In
14288-406: The environment. According to this view, mental states and their contents are at least partially determined by external circumstances. For example, some forms of content externalism hold that it can depend on external circumstances whether a belief refers to one object or another. The extended mind thesis states that external circumstances not only affect the mind but are part of it, like a diary or
14440-423: The evolution of vertebrates, their brains tended to grow and the specialization of the different brain areas tended to increase. These developments are closely related to changes in limb structures, sense organs, and living conditions with a close correspondence between the size of a brain area and the importance of its function to the organism. An important step in the evolution of mammals about 200 million years ago
14592-472: The evolutionary processes responsible for human intelligence have been proposed. The social intelligence hypothesis says that the evolution of the human mind was triggered by the increased importance of social life and its emphasis on mental abilities associated with empathy , knowledge transfer , and meta-cognition . According to the ecological intelligence hypothesis, the main value of the increased mental capacities comes from their advantages in dealing with
14744-407: The example of Islamic scholars such as Alhazen , emphasised reason an intrinsic human ability to decode the created order and the structures that underlie our experienced physical reality. This interpretation of reason was instrumental to the development of the scientific method in the early Universities of the high Middle Ages. The early modern era was marked by a number of significant changes in
14896-404: The forebrain. The primary operation of many of the main mental phenomena is located in specific areas of the forebrain. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive functions , such as planning, decision-making, problem-solving, and working memory. The role of the sensory cortex is to process and interpret sensory information, with different subareas dedicated to different senses, like
15048-477: The formulation of Kant, who wrote some of the most influential modern treatises on the subject, the great achievement of reason ( German : Vernunft ) is that it is able to exercise a kind of universal law-making. Kant was able therefore to reformulate the basis of moral-practical, theoretical, and aesthetic reasoning on "universal" laws. Here, practical reasoning is the self-legislating or self-governing formulation of universal norms , and theoretical reasoning
15200-423: The functional role of pain is given by its relation to bodily injury and its tendency to cause behavioral patterns like moaning and other mental states, like a desire to stop the pain. Computationalism , a similar theory prominent in cognitive science, defines minds in terms of cognitions and computations as information processors. Theories under the umbrella of externalism emphasize the mind's dependency on
15352-535: The heart of his Natural Law . In this doctrine, Thomas concludes that because humans have reason and because reason is a spark of the divine, every single human life is invaluable, all humans are equal, and every human is born with an intrinsic and permanent set of basic rights. On this foundation, the idea of human rights would later be constructed by Spanish theologians at the School of Salamanca . Other Scholastics, such as Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus , following
15504-419: The highest human happiness or well being ( eudaimonia ) as a life which is lived consistently, excellently, and completely in accordance with reason. The conclusions to be drawn from the discussions of Aristotle and Plato on this matter are amongst the most debated in the history of philosophy. But teleological accounts such as Aristotle's were highly influential for those who attempt to explain reason in
15656-643: The hippocampus, reducing the ability to form new memories and recall existing ones. An often-cited case of the effects of brain injury is Phineas Gage , whose prefrontal cortex was severely damaged during a work accident when an iron rod pierced through his skull and brain. Gage survived the accident but his personality and social attitude changed significantly as he became more impulsive, irritable, and anti-social while showing little regard for social conventions and an impaired ability to plan and make rational decisions. Not all these changes were permanent and Gage managed to recover and adapt in some areas. The mind has
15808-403: The human mind with the divine order of the cosmos. Within the human mind or soul ( psyche ), reason was described by Plato as being the natural monarch which should rule over the other parts, such as spiritedness ( thumos ) and the passions. Aristotle , Plato's student, defined human beings as rational animals , emphasizing reason as a characteristic of human nature . He described
15960-482: The increased human mental capacities as a matter of degree rather than kind. Central considerations for this position are the shared evolutionary origin, organic similarities on the level of brain and nervous system, and observable behavior, ranging from problem-solving skills, animal communication , and reactions to and expressions of pain and pleasure. Of particular importance are the questions of consciousness and sentience , that is, to what extent non-human animals have
16112-500: The individual changes vary from person to person as a form of learning from experience, like forming specific memories or acquiring particular behavioral patterns. Others are more universal developments as psychological stages that all or most humans go through as they pass through early childhood , adolescence , adulthood , and old age . These developments cover various areas, including intellectual, sensorimotor, linguistic, emotional, social, and moral developments. Some factors affect
16264-450: The individual. Psychoanalytic theory studies symptoms caused by this process and therapeutic methods to avoid them by making the repressed thoughts accessible to conscious awareness. Mental states are often divided into sensory and propositional states. Sensory states are experiences of sensory qualities, often referred to as qualia , like colors, sounds, smells, pains, itches, and hunger. Propositional states involve an attitude towards
16416-802: The inferences that people draw. The field of automated reasoning studies how reasoning may or may not be modeled computationally. Animal psychology considers the question of whether animals other than humans can reason. In the English language and other modern European languages , "reason", and related words, represent words which have always been used to translate Latin and classical Greek terms in their philosophical sense. The earliest major philosophers to publish in English, such as Francis Bacon , Thomas Hobbes , and John Locke also routinely wrote in Latin and French, and compared their terms to Greek, treating
16568-521: The influence of esteemed Islamic scholars like Averroes and Avicenna contributed to the development of the Scholastic view of reason, which laid the foundation for our modern understanding of this concept. Among the Scholastics who relied on the classical concept of reason for the development of their doctrines, none were more influential than Saint Thomas Aquinas , who put this concept at
16720-492: The information stored in a memory may be accessible when drawing conclusions or guiding actions even when the person is not explicitly thinking about it. Unconscious or nonconscious mental processes operate without the individual's awareness but can still influence mental phenomena on the level of thought, feeling, and action. Some theorists distinguish between preconscious, subconscious, and unconscious states depending on their accessibility to conscious awareness. When applied to
16872-469: The intellect into the faculties of understanding and judgment or adding sensibility as an additional faculty responsible for sensory impressions. In contrast to the traditional view, more recent approaches analyze the mind in terms of mental modules rather than faculties. A mental module is an inborn system of the brain that automatically performs a particular function within a specific domain without conscious awareness or effort. In contrast to faculties,
17024-598: The logos (the Ancient Greek : Λóγος , romanized : Lógos / Verbum ), which was identified with the Christ, was defined as a "person" of God. This concept was applied later to the Holy Ghost, the angels and to all human beings. Trinitarianism holds that God has three persons. Since then, a number of important changes to the word's meaning and use have taken place, and attempts have been made to redefine
17176-521: The marks or notes or remembrance are called " Signes " by Hobbes. Going further back, although Aristotle is a source of the idea that only humans have reason ( logos ), he does mention that animals with imagination, for whom sense perceptions can persist, come closest to having something like reasoning and nous , and even uses the word " logos " in one place to describe the distinctions which animals can perceive in such cases. Reason and imagination rely on similar mental processes . Imagination
17328-413: The mind include psychology , neuroscience , cognitive science , and philosophy . They tend to focus on different aspects of the mind and employ different methods of investigation, ranging from empirical observation and neuroimaging to conceptual analysis and thought experiments . The mind is relevant to many other fields, including epistemology , anthropology , religion, and education. The mind
17480-403: The minds of non-human animals are fundamentally different from human minds and often point to higher mental faculties, like thinking, reasoning, and decision-making based on beliefs and desires. This outlook is reflected in the traditionally influential position of defining humans as " rational animals " as opposed to all other animals. Continuity views, by contrast, emphasize similarities and see
17632-424: The modern philosophy of mind , this concept of personal identity is sometimes referred to as the diachronic problem of personal identity. The synchronic problem is grounded in the question of what features or traits characterize a given person at one time. Identity is an issue for both continental philosophy and analytic philosophy . A key question in continental philosophy is in what sense we can maintain
17784-497: The modern conception of identity, while realizing many of our prior assumptions about the world are incorrect. Proposed solutions to the problem of personal identity include continuity of the physical body, continuity of an immaterial mind or soul , continuity of consciousness or memory , the bundle theory of self, continuity of personality after the death of the physical body, and proposals that there are actually no persons or selves who persist over time at all. In ancient Rome,
17936-553: The motives of others without rational basis. Psychotic disorders are among the most severe mental illnesses and involve a distorted relation to reality in the form of hallucinations and delusions , as seen in schizophrenia . Other disorders include dissociative disorders and eating disorders . The biopsychosocial model identifies three types of causes of mental disorders: biological, cognitive, and environmental factors. Biological factors include bodily causes, in particular neurological influences and genetic predispositions. On
18088-432: The need for special sciences like psychology. For example, behaviorists aim to analyze mental concepts in terms of observable behavior without resorting to internal mental states. Type identity theory also belongs to reductive physicalism and says that mental states are the same as brain states. While non-reductive physicalists agree that everything is physical, they say that mental concepts describe physical reality on
18240-405: The norm of how it should work while usually causing some form of distress . The content of those norms is controversial and there are differences from culture to culture; for example, homosexuality was historically considered a mental disorder by medical professionals, a view which only changed in the second half of 20th century. There is a great variety of mental disorders, each associated with
18392-408: The other side of the spectrum are views that deny the existence of mentality in most or all non-human animals based on the idea that they lack key mental capacities, like abstract rationality and symbolic language. The status of animal minds is highly relevant to the field of ethics since it affects the treatment of animals, including the topic of animal rights . Discontinuity views state that
18544-558: The overall state of a person rather than specific processes, the term unconscious implies that the person lacks any awareness of their environment and themselves, like during a coma . The unconscious mind plays a central role in psychoanalysis as the part of the mind that contains thoughts, memories, and desires not accessible to conscious introspection. According to Sigmund Freud , the psychological mechanism of repression keeps disturbing phenomena, like unacceptable sexual and aggressive impulses, from entering consciousness to protect
18696-582: The person tries to alleviate by following compulsive rituals . Mood disorders cause intensive moods or mood swings that are inconsistent with the external circumstances and can last for extensive periods. For instance, people affected by bipolar disorder experience extreme mood swings between manic states of euphoria and depressive states of hopelessness. Personality disorders are characterized by enduring patterns of maladaptive behavior that significantly impair regular life, like paranoid personality disorder , which leads people to be deeply suspicious of
18848-518: The preoperational stage until seven years, children learn to interpret and use symbols in an intuitive manner. They start employing logical reasoning to physical objects in the concrete operational stage until eleven years and extend this capacity in the following formal operational stage to abstract ideas as well as probabilities and possibilities. Other important processes shaping the mind in this period are socialization and enculturation , at first through primary caretakers and later through peers and
19000-435: The present. When a person remembers what they had for dinner yesterday, they employ episodic memory. Semantic memory handles general knowledge about the world that is not tied to any specific episodes. When a person recalls that the capital of Japan is Tokyo, they usually access this general information without recalling the specific instance when they learned it. Procedural memory is memory of how to do things, such as riding
19152-456: The process of aging. Some people are affected by mental disorders , for which certain mental capacities do not function as they should. It is widely accepted that non-human animals have some form of mind, but it is controversial to which animals this applies. The topic of artificial minds poses similar challenges, with theorists discussing the possibility and consequences of creating them using computers. The main fields of inquiry studying
19304-421: The question "How should I live?" Instead, the unity of reason has to be strictly formal, or "procedural". He thus described reason as a group of three autonomous spheres (on the model of Kant's three critiques): For Habermas, these three spheres are the domain of experts, and therefore need to be mediated with the " lifeworld " by philosophers. In drawing such a picture of reason, Habermas hoped to demonstrate that
19456-417: The reasoning process through intuition—however valid—may tend toward the personal and the subjectively opaque. In some social and political settings logical and intuitive modes of reasoning may clash, while in other contexts intuition and formal reason are seen as complementary rather than adversarial. For example, in mathematics , intuition is often necessary for the creative processes involved with arriving at
19608-456: The relation between mind and matter uses empirical observation to study how the brain works and which brain areas and processes are associated with specific mental phenomena. The brain is the central organ of the nervous system and is present in all vertebrates and the majority of invertebrates . The human brain is of particular complexity and consists of about 86 billion neurons , which communicate with one another via synapses . They form
19760-511: The rules by which reason operates are the works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle , especially Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics . Although the Ancient Greeks had no separate word for logic as distinct from language and reason, Aristotle's newly coined word " syllogism " ( syllogismos ) identified logic clearly for the first time as a distinct field of study. When Aristotle referred to "the logical" ( hē logikē ), he
19912-538: The same " laws of nature " which affect inanimate things. This new understanding eventually displaced the previous world view that derived from a spiritual understanding of the universe. Accordingly, in the 17th century, René Descartes explicitly rejected the traditional notion of humans as "rational animals", suggesting instead that they are nothing more than "thinking things" along the lines of other "things" in nature. Any grounds of knowledge outside that understanding was, therefore, subject to doubt. In his search for
20064-513: The same individual. Monist views, by contrast, state that reality is made up of only one kind. According to idealists , everything is mental. They understand material things as mental constructs, for example, as ideas or perceptions. According to neutral monists , the world is at its most fundamental level neither physical nor mental but neutral. They see physical and mental concepts as convenient but superficial ways to describe reality. The monist view most influential in contemporary philosophy
20216-418: The same time seeking closeness and conformity with friends and peers. Further developments in this period include improvements to the reasoning ability and the formation of a principled moral viewpoint. The mind also changes during adulthood but in a less rapid and pronounced manner. Reasoning and problem-solving skills improve during early and middle adulthood. Some people experience the mid-life transition as
20368-460: The same. Some religions understand the soul as an independent entity that constitutes the immaterial essence of human beings, is of divine origin, survives bodily death, and is immortal . The word spirit has various additional meanings not directly associated with mind, such as a vital principle animating living beings or a supernatural being inhabiting objects or places. Cognition encompasses certain types of mental processes in which knowledge
20520-406: The schooling system. Psychological changes during adolescence are provoked both by physiological changes and being confronted with a different social situation and new expectations from others. An important factor in this period is change to the self-concept , which can take the form of an identity crisis . This process often involves developing individuality and independence from parents while at
20672-469: The seat of consciousness, emotions, thoughts, and sense of personal identity. Various fields of inquiry study the mind; the main ones include psychology , cognitive science , neuroscience , and philosophy . The words psyche and mentality are usually used as synonyms of mind . They are often employed in overlapping ways with the terms soul , spirit , cognition , intellect , intelligence , and brain but their meanings are not exactly
20824-509: The source of what we regard as most important and most problematical in our lives. Personhood is the status of being a person. Defining personhood is a controversial topic in philosophy and law , and is closely tied to legal and political concepts of citizenship , equality , and liberty . According to common worldwide general legal practice, only a natural person or legal personality has rights , protections, privileges , responsibilities, and legal liability . Personhood continues to be
20976-544: The substantive unity of reason, which in pre-modern societies had been able to answer questions about the good life, could be made up for by the unity of reason's formalizable procedures. Hamann , Herder , Kant , Hegel , Kierkegaard , Nietzsche , Heidegger , Foucault , Rorty , and many other philosophers have contributed to a debate about what reason means, or ought to mean. Some, like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Rorty, are skeptical about subject-centred, universal, or instrumental reason, and even skeptical toward reason as
21128-436: The theory, the category of "person" may be taken to include or not pre-natal humans or such non-human entities as animals , artificial intelligences , or extraterrestrial life . Personal identity is the unique identity of persons through time. That is to say, the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same person, persisting through time. In
21280-586: The underlying mechanisms on the physiological level and how they depend on genetic transmission and the environment. Developmental psychology studies the development of the mind from childhood to old age while social psychology examines the influence of social contexts on mind and behavior. Personality psychology investigates personality, exploring how characteristic patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior develop and vary among individuals. Further subfields include comparative , clinical , educational , occupational , and neuropsychology . Psychologists use
21432-434: The underlying processes continue their operation and the illusion persists even after a person has become aware of the illusion, indicating the mechanical and involuntary nature of the process. Other examples of mental modules concern cognitive processes responsible for language processing and facial recognition . Theories of the nature of mind aim to determine what all mental states have in common. They seek to discover
21584-464: The understanding of reason, starting in Europe . One of the most important of these changes involved a change in the metaphysical understanding of human beings. Scientists and philosophers began to question the teleological understanding of the world. Nature was no longer assumed to be human-like, with its own aims or reason, and human nature was no longer assumed to work according to anything other than
21736-447: The use of one's intellect . The field of logic studies the ways in which humans can use formal reasoning to produce logically valid arguments and true conclusions. Reasoning may be subdivided into forms of logical reasoning , such as deductive reasoning , inductive reasoning , and abductive reasoning . Aristotle drew a distinction between logical discursive reasoning (reason proper), and intuitive reasoning , in which
21888-489: The value that is intuitively bestowed upon humans, their possessions, animals, and aspects of the natural environment is due to a value monism known as "richness." Richness, Kelly argues, is a product of the "variety" and the "unity" within an entity or agent. According to Kelly, human beings and animals are morally valued and entitled to the status of persons because they are complex organisms whose multitude of psychological and biological components are generally unified towards
22040-512: The word persona (Latin) or prosopon ( πρόσωπον ; Ancient Greek) originally referred to the masks worn by actors on stage. The various masks represented the various "personae" in the stage play. The concept of person was further developed during the Trinitarian and Christological debates of the 4th and 5th centuries in contrast to the word nature. During the theological debates, some philosophical tools (concepts) were needed so that
22192-471: The word piano and a picture of a piano are intentional in a derivative sense: they do not directly refer to a piano but if a person looks at them, they may evoke in this person a mental state that refers to a piano. Philosophers who disagree that all mental states are intentional cite examples such as itches, tickles, and pains as possible exceptions. According to behaviorism , mental states are dispositions to engage in certain publicly observable behavior as
22344-450: The word with varying degrees of adoption and influence. According to Jörg Noller, at least six approaches can be distinguished: Other theories attribute personhood to those states that are viewed to possess intrinsic or universal value. Value theory attempts to capture those states that are universally considered valuable by their nature, allowing one to assign the concept of personhood upon those states. For example, Chris Kelly argues that
22496-426: The word. It also does not mean that humans acting on the basis of experience or habit are using their reason. Human reason requires more than being able to associate two ideas—even if those two ideas might be described by a reasoning human as a cause and an effect—perceptions of smoke, for example, and memories of fire. For reason to be involved, the association of smoke and the fire would have to be thought through in
22648-403: The words " logos ", " ratio ", " raison " and "reason" as interchangeable. The meaning of the word "reason" in senses such as "human reason" also overlaps to a large extent with " rationality " and the adjective of "reason" in philosophical contexts is normally " rational ", rather than "reasoned" or "reasonable". Some philosophers, Hobbes for example, also used the word ratiocination as
22800-540: Was readily adopted by the early Church as the Church Fathers saw Greek Philosophy as an indispensable instrument given to mankind so that we may understand revelation. For example, the greatest among the early Church Fathers and Doctors of the Church such as Augustine of Hippo , Basil of Caesarea , and Gregory of Nyssa were as much Neoplatonic philosophers as they were Christian theologians, and they adopted
22952-412: Was referring more broadly to rational thought. As pointed out by philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, some animals are also clearly capable of a type of " associative thinking ", even to the extent of associating causes and effects. A dog once kicked, can learn how to recognize the warning signs and avoid being kicked in the future, but this does not mean the dog has reason in any strict sense of
23104-418: Was the development of the neocortex , which is responsible for many higher-order brain functions. The size of the brain relative to the body further increased with the development of primates , like monkeys, about 65 million years ago and later with the emergence of the first hominins about 7–5 million years ago. Anatomically modern humans appeared about 300,000 to 200,000 years ago. Various theories of
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