Honors PHIL 355: Philosophy of Mind

I took this course as an elective for my Neuroscience Studies minor without knowing exactly what to expect.  I simply knew that it was taught by the professor who taught me Biomedical Ethics, who I liked very much, and I was excited to learn about the way the brain is perceived by a discipline outside of science. In the end, the course focused on different solutions that have been posed over the years for the “mind-body problem,” which asks whether humans are made up of tangible substances, intangible substances, or a combination of the two, and how the different substances might interact.

The course itself was interesting, though not particularly challenging, as we simply had to memorize theories.  The one part of the course that was quite difficult was the final paper, which was lengthened for the two of us who took the course for an honors credit.  For the paper, we had to find a published, professional philosophy paper that related to the course content and develop a counterargument for one of the paper’s theses.  Then, in our paper, we were to lay out our argument and refute any rebuttals we imagined the author of the original paper might make to it.  Aside from formulating an argument, this assignment was quite challenging because I had never written a philosophy paper before, and I had to learn all of the writing conventions of the field as I wrote. You can read the final version of this paper below.