{"id":878,"date":"2026-02-20T19:15:52","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T00:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/?page_id=878"},"modified":"2026-02-20T19:25:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T00:25:11","slug":"minds-and-machines-phil-250","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/?page_id=878","title":{"rendered":"Minds and Machines (PHIL 250)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>\u2013 Summer 2023, In Person<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A survey of dominant theories of the conscious mind, ranging from substance dualism, logical behaviourism, brain reductionism, computational functionalism, property dualism, epiphenomenalism, eliminative materialism, enactivism, and phenomenological philosophy of mind. Moreover, it assessed how adopting each of the above theories influences how we think about the possibility of artificial consciousness and how we assess the prospects of a scientific explanation of conscious experience. The course brought into dialogue and contrasted phenomenological approaches to formulating and addressing the problem of consciousness (centered around Husserl\u2019s so-called \u201cparadox of subjectivity\u201d) with approaches in the Analytic tradition (centered around Chalmers\u2019 so-called \u201chard problem of consciousness\u201d). Along the way, the course explored how philosophers\u2019 and cognitive scientists\u2019 choice of metaphors and imagery shapes their foundational assumptions and their starting points for theorizing about the mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/Minds-and-Machines-Syllabus-Elena-Holmgren-UBC-Summer-T1-2023-1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Syllabus for Minds and Machines<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-black-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/?page_id=860#UBC\" style=\"background-color:#e9dfd4c7\"><strong>back to Teaching Philosophy<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2013 Summer 2023, In Person.\u00a0 A survey of dominant theories of the conscious mind, ranging from substance dualism, logical behaviourism, brain reductionism, computational functionalism, property dualism, epiphenomenalism, eliminative materialism, enactivism, and phenomenological philosophy of mind. Moreover, it assessed how adopting each of the above theories influences how we think about the possibility of artificial consciousness&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-878","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=878"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":888,"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/878\/revisions\/888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}