CE-COLGM 2061 - What is Consciousness?

Leader: Dwight Goodyear, PhD, Westchester Community College professor of philosophy, SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, WCC Foundation Award for Scholarship One of the ongoing puzzles for humanity is, paradoxically, something that accompanies us all our waking lives: consciousness. We will explore two general approaches in Western philosophy. The first is dualism (Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Foster), which maintains that consciousness, although intimately related to a material brain and body, is itself not made of matter (the mind is akin to what has traditionally been called the soul). The second is materialism (Hobbes, Marx, Dennett, Churchland), a currently popular approach in the sciences and among those who deny the existence of immaterial and supernatural things. This view maintains that consciousness is nothing but certain material functions of the brain. Thinking about consciousness will also allow us to consider fascinating topics including the nature of perception, selfhood, knowledge, mental images, personhood, and immortality.

Location Valhalla