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Articles

The Notebook

Katherine Power explores the advantage of having an extended mind.

A common view amongst philosophers of mind is that mental states are ‘physically realised’. This means that if I believe that Magritte was a painter, there is something physical in the world which makes up that belief. Let’s say the belief is realised by a neural pattern of activation in my brain. If we took that pattern away, and did not replace it with another physical state serving the same role, I would no longer believe that Magritte was a painter.

If you agree so far, you might ask what kind of physical states realise mental ones.

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