Philosophy of Mind – Searching for the Soul

When I started this course I had an external tuition source critique my essays. Not that GK
is not helpful, but Pathways as it currently stands does not give involved tuition. As a result GK will give pointers when submitting essays to the essay cabinet and also may ask for the essay to be submitted again with certain improvements. However there is no active mentoring or tuition anymore.

As a result I had my 5 previous essays from the Introduction course reviewed in more depth. Basically I was told (among other things ) to structure my essays with a definite introduction, main and conclusion. Additionally I was told not to be overly descriptive, argue for a certain point and not quote too much as I was doing this mostly “for adornment”, which did not strengthen my case.

Before starting the Pathways course I bought the Philosophy of Mind course from the Great Courses. This was about $30 (they regularly discount their courses) and was presented by Professor Patrick Grim, who was very clear. This gave me a good overview before reading the Pathways material. PFA did a lecture on Philosophical Zombies, so I picked that option for my first essay. I found this interesting as I could work in ideas from Cartesian Dualism from the Descartes Meditations book (this is quite short and easy to read). The second essay revolved specifically around Descartes sixth Meditation, so all in all I got a good introduction to Descartes. I look forward to reading his other work, Discourse on Method.

The third essay was on the change of personal identity over time. I read Introducing Persons by Peter Carruthers for this, but did not finish the whole book, as I found it hard going (though I do plan to come back to it to cover Hume’s bundle theory). Again I found Grim’s course a good reference point. I was familiar with the ideas from the Introduction to Philosophy course and also referred back to Shelly Kagen’s course on Death on the Yale courses web site. I had to refer to John Locke also, whose ideas I find practical, though he does not write so clearly as Descartes. I came back to Locke for the discussion on Qualia which served as my fourth essay. Again Grim proved a great reference point and his example of Dennett’s thought experiments were excellent.

For my last essay I read Three Dialogs by George Berkeley to investigate how subjective idealism relates to free will. GK did not like my interpretation of compatabilism so I had to amend the essay and re-submit it. All in all I liked Berkeley and this rounded off a good course. Overall I felt I learnt a good deal, but really needed to learn a lot more. Martin Jenkins from the ISFP also reviewed my essays and provided good feedback also, together with GK’s comments. Again I had some of my essays reviewed by an external tutor, but was not sure at what level his remarks were aimed at (and did not exactly agree with some of them). As a result I may come back to them if I start studying Philosophy at a higher academic level.

I found Grim’s course of lectures provided a good overview. I later found out that John Searle has Philosophy of Mind audio lectures freely available on the web, but I found the Great courses option worth the money, as it provides a guide book also which summarises the lectures and suggests further reading. I find that having a set of lectures as a reference (together with the Pathways guides) essential as the Pathway guides sometimes appear to presume previous knowledge. I think that is because they were originally presented as material which would come together with definite tuition. I have definitely missed a good course of lectures while beginning my current course on the Pre-Socratics and will buy Great courses lecture series on Ethics and MetaPhysics for Pathways E and F courses, as these form a more definite self contained curriculum than the Pathways courses currently do. They do not have any on Philosophy of Language, but I will use Searles Philosophy of Language lectures for that.

Finished essay for perusal as below:Stephen Lumsden B1 15.1.18Stephen Lumsden B2 24.2.18Stephen Lumsden B3 22.3.18Stephen Lumsden B4 12.4.18Stephen Lumsden B5 10.6.18