Philosophy of Mind

Philosophy of Mind is a Humanities course in the CTY program with no prerequisites. Its course code is MIND, and it is offered at Carlisle, Lancaster, Los Angeles, and Saratoga Springs.

Course Description

This class functions both titularly and as a basic introduction to general philosophy. It is dominated in equal portions by lecture, debate, and difficult readings during study hall. Though it does not require a foundation in logic, it makes much use of logical concepts. The course progresses by introducing new ideas, which are discussed and generally denied as truth before moving onto the next philosopher and philosophy.

Activities can include a trip to the primate lab, a debate with another Philosophy of the Mind class or the Logic class, a combined lesson/discussion on animal intellegence with the Cognitive Psychology class, as well as demonstrations with robotics to aid the eventual discussion of the mental capability of robots. Discussion regarding artificial intelligence varies by class, but may play a large part in the course.

Class History

Carlisle

MIND.A.CAR.05.2 was inhabited by Alex, George, Daniel/Freak, Eva, Sarah, Caitlin, Erika, and Mel(eroni)/Olivia, in that order of seating.

CAR.06.2, taught by professor Zsolt, remembers:

• abusing Zsolt's cat and little Johnny
• determining that their hypothetical pet rat was killed by professor Zsolt when he hit it one too many times, hypothetically (the poor rat had no chance against skeptical physicalists)
• then agreeing to damn Descartes to a Godless world and see how he survived not knowing what to think
• "You are told 'not to worry' because, while your physical brain and body will be squashed to strawberry jam, your structure will be 'celebrated' by millions of dancing Indians (with '1' and '0' T-shirts) who will 'do your thing.'"

CAR.09.2 was taught by Tracie Mahaffey and David Richter was the TA. David was notably unenthusiastic and was dubbed 'Kip' by several of the girls in the class due to his resemblance to the Napoleon Dynomite character. Despite all this, he was oddly beloved and several of the girls attempted stalking him after CTY ended.

Those in that class were: Sean, Thomas (NOTE: Sean and Thomas would oftentimes create a 'conglomeration of souls' they called Seanmas (pronounced in a manner close in resemblance to 'Seamus', the name of a guy in their hall). Seanmas involved alternating words to create a sentance as a singular entity, and that was about it. Tom and Sean did create a podcast together on Dualism, during which Tom represented the mind of Seanmas and Sean represented the body of Seanmas), Emily, Anna, Christine, Alice, Meghan, Rebecca, Jacob, Jameson, Julie R, Julie L, and Jo. It should be noted that this was the session of the 'Swine Flu Witchhunt', and as a result Jacob and Jameson were sent home early, though neither had flu.

During class, a good deal of time was spent talking about artificial intellegence (virtually all video watched was about artificial intellegence: AI, Wall-e, a Star Trek Episode, and a Battlestar Galactica thing. The only notable exceptions of this were an episode of Rugrats and a lecture by Dan Dennett) and free will. A day was also spent dedicated to philosophical zombies, which involved wearing zombie makeup. Many a look were exchanged between HUB worker and Phil. of Mind student that day.

Class fluctuated from being insanely fun and interesting to being incredibly boring. Tracie, the instructor, did allow for such exclaimations as 'OMFG!' and 'STFU!', provided the student who made said exclaimation say the 'F' stood for 'Frak' (Tracie was something of a Battlestar Galactica fanatic). The most exciting discovery in class was of the phrase '...failures on an epic scale...' in the middle of the philosophy textbook.

Evening sessions were torturous. The reading meterial seldom made sense unless you were concentrating intently on it, a difficult task (within 20 minutes of study hall, half the class would have given up on reading and would have been cavorting about playing games. David the TA, timid person he was, would never stop this. Therefore, any attempts to read an essay on idealism would be halted by an impromptu fashion show on top of the tables or several people in liberally applied lipstick claiming to be prostitutes).

Lancaster

The LAN.05.1 class members were the originators of Thormanism, a religion that is now quite widespread in Papua New Guinea.

The LAN.05.2 session students determined that pants were indeed chairs, inducing much confusion and many a joke the rest of the session. It was also discovered that there were little Chinese men in our brains and that the hallway outside the room was actually France. This session was also marked by the recurrence of the exceedingly well-drawn chalkboard man who was depicted perpetually in the action of sticking his hand in a fire, and demonstrating by the tenets of behaviorism that he has a mind.

The LAN.06.2 group, instructed by Daniel Estrada, tended to worship chairs, watch their TA intently during class, and gang up on their instructor chanting "treeeeeeeeee..." and hugging him. There were also floppy husbands and robot kicking...

John Lawhead TA'd in 07.1 and supposedly converted perfectly weird CTYers into Trekkies.

LAN.07.2 remembers Keepon the dancing robot and Bjork music videos.

LAN.09.2 was perpetually amused by their instructor's ('Marky Mark'/Mark Uffelman) "bulging biceps" -- which he constantly showed off, by their TA's ('Steve-O'/Stephen Foley) ever-expanding number of girlfriends (he got to 23-- he was polyamorous), and by fun philosophy of mind pick-up lines such as: "Let's study behaviorism and the relationship between your input and my output" and "Let's study eliminative materialism, i'll eliminate all the material on your body and you can think about it" (cred to Ali G. for the pickup lines)

Side effects of MIND may include mistaking one's lanyard for a shoe; determining that one does not, in fact, exist; hatching a plan to bioengineer a unicorn (horse + narwal!), and general sleeping spells, including, but not limited to, those occurring during class.

LMU

At LMU, the class is generally taught by Zed Adams, who is known for his picture with a mummy and for telling morbid stories about philosophers. He was also known for showing seemingly arbitrary movies, including The Princess Bride (which supposedly relates to behavioralism), scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, March of the Penguines, and Star Trek. He no longer shows these movies and instead is said to show Koko the Gorilla and Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control.

Loudonville

The Loudonville class in 2005 was taught by Dan Thero.